
Class jr_iai5II 
Book 'Jdi 



CofflightJ^ ° -Kl (^5" 



CQFVRIGHT DEPOSXH 



Compliments of the 

Prohibition Federation 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 



N 




LINCOLN 



Frontispiece 



Lincoln and Liquor 



BY 

DUNCAN C. MILNER 




THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 

M C M X X 



■z 



Copyright, 1920, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



©Cf.A576336 
SEP 10 i9^l 



r 



IN LOVING MEMORY OF 
L. R. M. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 9 

CHAPTER 

I Drink in Pioneer Days 13 

II Lincoln as a Sufferer from Drink ... 27 

III Lincoln as an Abstainer ...... 45 

IV Lincoln as a Temperance Reformer ... 61 
V Lincoln and Prohibition 73 

VI Lincoln's Great Temperance Speech ... 87 

VII The Presidents and Liquor 103 

VIII Lincoln: America's Great-Heart . . . . 125 

Appendix i39 

List of Books Quoted i53 



FOREWORD 

At the opening of the nineteenth century Napoleon 
Bonaparte was the commanding figure of the world. 
The hero of the new century is Abraham Lincoln. 
While identified with the Civil War as commander- 
in-chief of the victorious armies, no man ever suf- 
fered more than he on account of that terrible con- 
flict. In vivid contrast with the famed Corsican, he 
was ever in great-hearted, tender sympathy with hu- 
man suffering and misfortune. He lacked utterly that 
traditional ambition of other rulers of men which 
gratifies self-seeking interests even at the cost of suf- 
fering and death to their fellow-men. 

Lincoln's soul revolted at war, yet he realized that, 
as things were, war must be; and he it was who, in 
the face of cries for peace at any price, said : "With 
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in." ^ 

It was to be expected that men would try to conjure 
with the great name of Lincoln. He has been claimed 
as a follower even by atheists and spiritualists. Those 
who favor liquor-drinking and liquor-selling have 
made special efforts to identify him with their cause. 
Many volumes have been published treating of Lin- 

^Second Inaugural Address. 



lo FOREWORD 

coin's religious faith and his relation to slavery. When 
we think of the great controversies on the subjects of 
intemperance and slavery we cannot but realize that 
Lincoln must have had vital relations with both sub- 
jects. It will surely, therefore, be not only reasonable 
but profitable as well to publish all the facts as to his 
relations to the temperance reform. 

Wine and strong drink have a large place in the lit- 
erature of many nations. College students find 
praises of wine abounding in their classical studies, 
and many college songs have a decided bacchanalian 
flavor. Poets, from Horace to Robert Burns, have 
glorified wine and liquor-drinking. For ages men ac- 
cepted the dominance of drink and the facts of drunk- 
enness as necessities of human nature. Dickens' pic- 
tures of the drink debauchery in the England of his 
day are paralleled in the customs and conditions sur- 
rounding the Great Emancipator.- The marvel about 

^Dickens was a contemporary of Lincoln. In coming days, 
when drink will be banished from the daily life of respectable 
people and when a drunkard will be a curiosity, it will be diffi- 
cult for readers of Dickens to understand his persistent refer- 
ences to the use of all kinds of liquors. While he gives harrow- 
ing pictures of poverty and suffering caused by drink, and some 
of his drunkards are disgusting and horrible, it must be said 
that his celebration of social drinking has a tendency to make 
attractive the use of intoxicants. 

G. K. Chesterton, in his critical study of Dickens, resents the 
criticism by temperance reformers "of the Bacchic element in 
the books of Dickens," but admits that the great novelist "did de- 
fend drink clamorously, praised it with passion, and de- 
scribed whole orgies of it with enormous gusto." And he adds : 
"Yet it is wonderfully typical of his prompt and impatient na- 
ture that he himself drank comparatively little." He also de- 
clares that Dickens praised wine-drinking "because it was a great 
human institution— one of the rites of civilization." This "glit- 



FOREWORD II 

Lincoln is that in the midst of ahiiost universal drink- 
ing he not only grew up entirely free from the habit 
but, from his early youth, was consistently antagonis- 
tic to drink. 

Total abstinence and prohibition had small place in 
the thoughts of the people of Lincoln's day. There 
was general acceptance of the idea, however, that al- 
coholic liquors were a necessity. In everyday life 
they were a part of hospitality and supposed good 
cheer; in sickness they were regarded as sovereign 
remedies. Alcoholic liquor was called aqua vitcB, the 
water of life. 

Since this book was prepared for the press there 
has been published a most interesting book by Dr. 
Ervin Chapman, entitled ''Latest Light on Abraham 
Lincoln," which contains the most extended account 
hitherto published on ''Lincoln and Temperance." 

My dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Edward C. Ray, of 
Santa Barbara, CaL, read my early notes on the sub- 
ject of this book, and urged its completion and pub- 
lication. 

Judge Robert McMurdy, of Chicago, the eminent 

tering generality," however, makes a poor apology for the hor- 
rors of the drink traffic and the brutality of the alcohol habit 
so conspicuous in England. 

In Dickens' time there was little social consciousness of the 
drink evil. One can but think that if he could have had the mod- 
ern knowledge obtained from scientific discovery and experi- 
ment, and the results of social and economic study as to the 
liquor scourge, he might have written the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
of the temperance reform, and added to his crown the glories 
of another revolution in the uplift of human society. Because 
the world is awakening from its alcoholic stupor, we now seem 
to be approaching the end of the temperance controversy. 



12 FOREWORD 

lawyer and devoted friend of philanthropy, aided me 
with many suggestions. 

The late Jenkin Lloyd Jones,— the founder of Abra- 
ham Lincoln Centre of Chicago, — the man who led 
in the discovery of Lincoln's birthplace, who was in- 
strumental in its rescue from pollution as the site of a 
distillery, and whose ''love for and veneration of the 
martyr-president" was said ''by a friend" to be "the 
consuming passion of Mr. Jones' life," — urged the 
publication of the. book, on the ground that it was not 
simply a temperance document but an addition to the 
Lincoln literature. 

The Author. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 



CHAPTER I 

DRINK IN PIONEER DAYS 

During the childhood and youth of Ahraham Lin- 
coln liquor-drinking was almost universal, and that 
period in American history has been described as one 
of sad debauchery. Robert Ellis Thompson writes: 

At the opening of the century it really seemed as if 
the manhood of America was about to be drowned in 
strong drink. The cheapness of untaxed intoxicants — 
rum, whiskey, and apple-jack, made by any one who chose 
to undertake the business and sold at every gathering of 
the people without reference to the age or sex of the 
purchaser — had made drunkenness almost universal. 
Samuel Brech, writing at the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, says that "it was impossible to secure a servant — 
white or black, bond or free — who could be depended on 
to keep sober for twenty- four hours. All classes and 
professions were afifected. The judge was overcome on 
the bench ; the minister sometimes staggered on his way 
to the pulpit. When a church had to be built, the cost 
of the rum needed would be greater than that of the 
lumber or the labor employed. When an ecclesiastical 

13 



14 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

convention of any kind was to be entertained it was a 
question how much strong drink would be required for 
the reverend members." ^ 



In "A Llistory of American Christianity," we are 
told that ''the long struggle of the American Church 
against drunkenness as a social and public evil began 
at an early date," but while there were indications of 
a public sentiment against the evils of drink, it "did 
not prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of 
drunkenness as one of the distinguishing characteris- 
tics of American society at the opening of the nine- 
teenth century. . . . Seven years of army life with 
its exhaustion and exposure and military social usage 
had initiated into dangerous drinking habits many of 
the most justly influential leaders of society, and the 
example of these had set the tone for all ranks. . . . 
Gradually and unobserved the nation had settled down 
into a slough of drunkenness of which it is difficult 
for us at this date to form a clear conception. In the 
prevalence of intemperate drinking habits the clergy 
had not escaped the general infection. The priest and 
the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." ^ 
Weddings were, as a rule, drinking frolics. Christ- 
mas, New Year's day, and other holidays were times 
of excessive drinking and drunkenness. College com- 
mencements and other functions, and even ministers' 
ordinations and installations, were not considered com- 
plete without a supply of liquors. 

^ Thompson, "The Hand of God in American History," p. 119. 
^ Bacon. "A History of American Christianity," p. 285. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 15 

The Rev. Lyman Beecher thus describes the ordi- 
nation of a minister at Plymouth, Connecticut, in 
1810: 

At this ordination the preparation for our creature 
comforts besides food inckided a broad sideboard cov- 
ered with decanters and bottles, and sugar and pitchers 
of water. There we found all kinds of liquors then in 
vogue. The drinking was apparently universal. This 
preparation was made by the society as a matter of 
course. When the consociation arrived, they always took 
something to drink around, also before public services, 
and always on their return. As they could not all drink 
at once, they were obliged to stand and wait as people do 
when they go to mill. When they had all done drinking 
and taken to pipes and tobacco, in less than fifteen min- 
utes there was such a smoke you could not see. The 
noise I cannot describe. It was the maximum of hilar- 
ity. They told their stories and were at the height of 
jocose talk.^ 

This describes happenings, not on the rough and 
wild frontier, but at a most solenm religious meeting 
in staid and cultured New England. At a noted col- 
lege in Virginia, when the corner stone of a new 
building was laid, one of the trustees generously pro- 
vided a l)arrel of whiskey for the occasion. The head 
of the barrel was removed, dippers were provided, and 
everybody was urged to partake. 

A noted Harvard professor, picturing the scenes at 
commencement in those early days, writes : 

' Lyman Beecher, "Autobiography." 



i6 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

The entire common, then an unenclosed dust plain, 
was completely covered on Commencement day, and the 
night preceding and following it, with drinking-stands, 
dancing-booths, mountebank shows and gambling-tables ; 
and I have never heard such a horrid din, tumult, and 
jargon of oath, shout, scream, fiddle, quarreling, and 
drunkenness as on those two nights. 



Col. T. W. Lligginson, in his "Recollections," says: 

■ I can remember when the senior class assembled an- 
nually around Liberty Tree on Class Day and ladled out 
bowls of punch for every passer-by, till every Cambridge 
boy saw a dozen men in various stages of inebriation 
about the village yard. 

Similar stories are told of Yale, Dartmouth, and 
other colleges. There was a common maxim in those 
days that no man could be found in one of the colleges 
who had not been drunk at least once in his life. 

The Rev. John Chambers, for over fifty years a 
Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, became promi- 
nent as an advocate of temperance. Much disturbed 
by the common custom of serving liquor at funerals, 
he gave notice from his pulpit that he would enter no 
house where liquors were supplied. On one occa- 
sion, coming to the door of the house where he was to 
officiate and seeing glasses and decanters on the table, 
he refused to enter. Though a heavy rain was falling, 
when he was invited in out of the wet, his reply was: 
"No! I'll drown first." He compromised far enough 
to hold a service at the door, while an elder held an 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 17 

umbrella over him. This action on the part of the 
minister made a great sensation, and an elder and 
some members withdrew from his church.'* 

In 1833 Dr. George B. Cheever, a minister in Salem, 
Massachusetts, published a pamphlet entitled ''Deacon 
Giles' Distillery." In the form of allegory, Deacon 
Giles was pictured as running a distillery and also as 
having a room in his liquor factory where Bibles were 
sold. In a dream imps entered by night and painted 
signs on the casks which became visible when they 
were tapped for retail sale. The inscriptions were 
of this style : 

''Who hath woe? Inquire at Deacon Giles' Dis- 
tillery." 

"Who hath Delirium Tremens? — Insanity and Mur- 
der? Inquire at Deacon Giles' Distillery." 

At that time there were four distilleries in full blast 
in Salem, and one of them was run by a deacon who 
also sold Bibles in his distillery. A relative of his 
had been drowned in a whiskey vat, and he had a 
drunken son ; and these incidents were alsO' pictured 
in the dream. The deacon who owned this distillery 
sued the young minister for libel; and although de- 
fended by Rufus Choate, he was sentenced to pay a 
fme and to thirty days' imprisonment. The women of 
Salem sympathized with Cheever, furnished his cell 
with comfortable furniture, and saw that he did not 
lack good things to eat. As might have been expected, 
the affair excited great attention, and the pamphlets 
had a tremendous sale. Dr. Cheever had as successor 
*Griffis, "John Chambers," p. 51. 



i8 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

to his first pamphlet another entitled "Deacon Jones' 
Brewery; or Distiller turned Brewer." In this imps 
were pictured as dancing around the brewery caldrons, 
casting in noxious and poisonous drugs. There were 
no further prosecutions, but the two "dreams" proved 
tO' be powerful documents in behalf of the rising tem- 
perance reform. 

Slavery and intemperance were at that time recog- 
nized as twin evils, and the two reforms that aimed 
at their destruction were in many cases antagonized 
by the same advocates. Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, 
who became noted as an apologist for slavery from 
the standpoint of the Bible, published a book with the 
title, "The Triumph of Temperance is the Triumph 
of Infidelity." He declared that the wines of the 
Bible were all intoxicating liquors, and that the tem- 
perance reformers, when urging total abstinence, were 
doing the work of infidels. 

Rev. Dr. J. M. Sturtevant, in a private letter, tells 
of visiting and worshiping in an old church at Tal- 
madge, Ohio, where he "was shown the wooden ves- 
sel which had held the gallon of whiskey given as a 
prize for the first stick of timber brought to the spot 
for its construction." 

Farmers were compelled to supply liquor to their 
helpers, and men thought that, without liquor, they 
could not endure the toil of harvest or thrashing. It 
was the common belief that men engaged in any form 
of hard labor needed alcoholic liquors, and they de- 
manded as a right that employers should furnish regu- 
lar supplies. Mothers and babes were given liquor, 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 19 

and it was thought of such value that good people said 
they could not sleep at night without assurance that 
there was liquor in the house. 

While these ideas prevailed in the older portions of 
the country, the superstitious belief in the need and 
value of alcoholic liquors was even more prevalent 
in frontier life. In the pioneer days of Kentucky, In- 
diana, and Illinois the market for the crops was lim- 
ited, and there was a lack of transportation. There 
were many small neighborhood distilleries. Corn was 
made into whiskey because that was easily trans- 
ported, and it was even used in the payment of debts. 
Indeed, when Lincoln's father decided to leave Ken- 
tucky, he sold his farm and took part of the payment 
in whiskey. 

The liquor saloon, as it now exists, with every de- 
vice for the encouragement of drinking, was, how- 
ever, at that time utterly unknown. In the barroom 
of taverns were small cupboards under lock and key, 
from which whiskey, brandy, and rum were sold. 
Whiskey was sold in stores just as molasses and sim- 
ilar commodities were sold. 

Although Lincoln was born and grew to manhood 
in the midst of such conditions, and in an age when 
such were the popular ideas in regard to drink, he 
never drank, but was a lifelong total abstainer. When 
a very young man he was so impressed with the evils 
of drink that he wrote an essay on temperance, — an 
essay that made such an impression on the community 
that a minister asked for a copy and had it printed in 
an Ohio newspaper. It is possible that this paper may 



20 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

yet be found. ^ In his mature life, in a very noted ad- 
dress, — hereinafter referred to more fully, — Lincoln 
spoke of the almost universal use of liquor and said : 

When all such of us as have now reached the years of 
maturity first opened our eyes upon the stage of exist- 
ence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by every- 
body, used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It com- 
monly entered into the first draught of the infant and 
the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard 
of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the house- 
less loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians pre- 
scribed it in this, that, and the other disease ; government 
provided it for soldiers ; and to have a rolling or raising, 
a husking or hoedown anywhere about, without it, was 
positively unsufferable. So, too, it was everywhere a re- 
spectable article of manufacture and of merchandise. 
The making of it was regarded as an honorable liveli- 
hood, and he who could make most was the most enter- 
prising and respectable. Large and small manufactories 
of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly 
goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it 
from town to town ; boats bore it from clime to clime, and 
the winds wafted it from nation to nation ; and mer- 
chants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with 
precisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, 
buyer, or bystander as are felt at the buying and selling 
of plows, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessi- 
ties of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated, 

^ Carl Schurz, "Essay — Abraham Lincoln." 

"The boy Lincoln, learning to write, practiced on a wooden 
shovel scraped white, and on a bass wood shingle. Seeing boys 
put a burning coal on the back of a wood turtle, he was moved 
to write on cruelty to animals. Seeing men intoxicated with 
whiskey, he wrote on temperance." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 21 

but recognized and adopted its use. It is true that even 
then it was known and acknowledged that many were 
greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the in- 
jury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the 
abuse of a very good thing. 

General Neal Dow gives many illustrations of the 
sentiment as to liquor. He was born in 1804. Writ- 
ing of the days of his youth (he and Lincoln were 
nearly the same age), he says: 

Liquor was found place on all occasions. Town meet- 
ings, musters, firemen's parades, cattle shows, fairs, and, 
in short, every gathering of the people of a public or 
social nature, resulted almost invariably in scenes which, 
in these days, would shock the people of Maine into in- 
dignation, but which were regarded then as a matter of 
course. Private assemblies were little better. Wed- 
dings, balls, parties, huskings, barn-raisings, and even 
funerals, were dependent upon intoxicants, while often 
religious conferences and ministerial gatherings resulted 
in an increase of the ordinary consumption of liquors. 

The same writer gives an account of the liquors 
provided at the dedication of a church building. The 
first minister of that church was warned by his offi- 
cers to drink less, as he had several times ''appeared 
in such a condition that he could scarcely mount the 
pulpit stairs." The church, though it at length dis- 
missed him, was so divided by the stand taken against 
liquor that it was almost wrecked. 

General Dow also tells of an early pastor of a Port- 
land church who was making the rounds of the par- 



22 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

ish. At every house he was expected to "take some- 
thing," as was the common custom of ministers at 
that time. The good parson, after accepting many 
invitations to drink, said : 

"Deacon, this will never do; we shall be drunkards 
together. I will not drink any more." 

Another illuminating incident related by General 
Dow concerns the collapse of the frame of a church, 
some miles in the country, by which a number of peo- 
ple were injured. The accident was caused by some 
drunken men engaged in constructing the edifice. 
When teams came to Portland for doctors to set the 
broken limbs and repair other damages they found 
the physicians at some festive gathering in such 
drunken condition that the injured men had tO' wait un- 
til the next day to get surgical help. It was after this 
incident that the people made the discovery that men 
"could do hard work without rum," and one man who 
built a large house offered the workmen, if they would 
abstain from strong drink, more than the cost of the 
liquor ration.^ 

In those days reputable people, some of them offi- 
cers of the church, sold liquor in their stores. Gen- 
eral Dow affirms that an examination of the account 
books of the country stores from 1820 to 1840 showed 
that a majority of the entries were for liquor. D. R. 
Locke (the Petroleum V. Nasby of the Toledo Blade), 
who investigated prohibition in Maine, said that he 
found one set of books in a village store in which 
* Neal Dow, "Reminiscences," pp. 159-171. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 23 

eighty-four per cent of the entries were for rum. All 
sorts of clothing and groceries ''appeared at rare in- 
tervals, but rum was splotched on every page." 

One of the men closely associated with Lincoln's 
life as a young man,— before the future President be- 
came a resident of Springfield,— was Dr. John Allen. 
He was Lincoln's physician at a critical period. At the 
time of the death of Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's first love 
and fiancee, his health was broken and he had a pro- 
tracted illness from chills and fever. Dr. Allen urged 
Lincoln to go to the home of Bowling Greene, and 
Greene and his wife, under the good physician's direc- 
tion, nursed him back to health and strength. 

Dr. Allen was noted as a sturdy opponent of both 
slavery and intemperance. He was an active worker 
in the Washingtonian movement, and many of the 
early settlers strongly opposed his crusades against 
liquor. One of his associates in this temperance work 
was Rev. John Berry, whose son was Lincoln's part- 
ner I'n the Salem store. Young Berry's drinking hab- 
its helped wreck the business. The father, however, 
had much influence over Lincoln. 

Even in the churches -of that day there was strong 
opposition to meddling with the liquor business. 
Mentor Graham, the school-teacher who helped Lin- 
coln prepare for his surveying work, was a member 
of the ''Hardshell" Baptist Church. He became an ar- 
dent advocate of temperance. At a meeting of the 
church to consider this reform movement, Graham by 
a unanimous vote was suspended from membership 



24 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

because of his activities in the cause of total absti- 
nence. At the same meeting the church suspended 
another member who was found "dead drunk." 

An inquisitive member took exception to this action 
of the congregation. Taking a partly filled flask of 
liquor from his pocket, he shook it in the face of the 
congregation, and in the nasal drawls associated with 
Hardshell religious meetings, said : 

''Brethering, you have turned one member out be- 
ca'se he would not drink and another beca'se he got 
drunk, and now I want to ask a c[uestion : How much 
of this 'ere critter does one have to drink to remain in 
full fellowship in this church?" ''' 

The late William Reynolds of Peoria, Illinois, noted 
as a Sunday-school worker, is authority for the state- 
ment that churches of this type resented all interfer- 
ence with slavery or liquor-drinking, and strongly op- 
posed Sunday schools. One of their preachers, ac- 
cording to Mr. Reynolds, took as his text for a ser- 
mon: 'The gates of hell shall not prevail." There 
were four gates of hell, he said. The first was those 
Bible societies that were putting the Scriptures in the 
hands of the unlearned. The second was the Repub- 
lican party, which was in favor of freeing the niggers 

^ Rankin, "Personal Recollections," p. 78. 

The first American Temperance Society on record was formed 
in Massachusetts in 1820; and this was the pledge: 

"We, the midersigned, recognizing the evils of drunkenness 
and resolved to check its alarming increase, with consequent 
poverty, misery, and crime among our people, hereby solemnly 
pledge ourselves that we will not get drunk more than four times 
a year, viz., Fourth of July, Muster Day, Christmas Day, and 
Sheep-Shearing." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 25 

and went around preaching nigger equality. The 
third was the Sunday school, which professed to teach 
the Scripture but was really getting the young peo- 
ple together for a frolic on the Lord's Day and getting 
them to hanker after one another. The fourth gate 
of hell was those temperance societies that went around 
smelling people's breaths and interfering with the peo- 
ple's personal liberty to take a little something for 
their stomachs' sake and many infirmities. *'But," he 
concluded, ''the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
the church." 



CHAPTER II 

LINCOLN AS A SUFFERER FROM DRINK 

A common saying among apologists for drink has 
been : ''You let liquor alone and it will let you alone." 
Many facts prove this an untruth. Innocent and ab- 
staining wives and children and sober fathers and 
mothers are often great sufferers because some one 
near and dear to them has become a victim of alco- 
holic liquor. The drink traffic, — producing through 
its victim poverty, crime, and disease, — lays heavy 
burdens on the sober part of the community. Many 
burdensome taxes are caused or increased by the need 
of caring for criminals, paupers, and people rendered 
mentally and physically infirm as a result of drink. 

When quite a young man Lincoln was returning 
home one evening with some companions after a hard 
day's work threshing wheat. They found a man ly- 
ing by the roadside. He was an old and respectable 
neighbor, but hopelessly drunk. All efforts failed to 
rouse the man to help himself. Lincoln's companions 
said: "He has made his bed; let him lie in it." It 
was a cold night, and the man would have perished 
if this inhuman resolution had been carried out. Lin- 
coln, however, without help, took the poor inebriate, 
wtio was a big man, on his shoulders, and carried him 

27 



28 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

a long distance to the cabin of Dennis Hawks, where 
he built a fire, warmed and rubbed the man, and cared 
for him during the night. It is recorded that this 
drunkard reformed and showed a lifelong gratitude to 
Lincoln for saving his life.^ Abraham Lincoln carry- 
ing that drunken man was typical of the sober com- 
munity caring for the victims of drink. 

While Lincoln was a lifelong abstainer, he suffered 
many things from drink. His own father was not a 
drunkard. According to Herndon, he ''had no marked 
aversion for the bottle, but indulged no more freely 
than the average Kentuckian of his day." ^ There are 
indications, however, that a number of Lincoln's rela- 
tives and friends were victims of drink. 

While he was a clerk in the store at New Salem, 
Lincoln had often to deal with the rude crowds that 
came to the village. The ''Clary's Grove boys" were 
a lawless, rollicking crowd; and often, under the in- 
fluence of liquor, committed outrages upon innocent 
people. Lincoln proved himself their superior in 
feats of physical strength and gained such power over 
them that under his pressure many of their ruffian 
performances were ended. 

One of the most painful trials of Lincoln's life was 
occasioned by his business relations with William F. 
Berry. Berry and Lincoln formed a business part- 
nership, purchased the groceries of the village, and 
consolidated them. The partners, having no money, 
gave their notes for about fifteen hundred dollars. 

^ Lamon, "Life of Lincoln," p. 57. 
' Herndon and Weik, Vol. I, p. 8. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 29 

Berry, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, 
was a hard drinker and a gambler. It is said that he 
spent most of his time drinking liquor, while Lincoln 
was absorbed in reading, with the result that the busi- 
ness enterprise proved a failure. The drunken part- 
ner let Lincoln bear the whole burden of the indebted- 
ness. For fifteen years Lincoln carried the heavy 
load. He spoke of it often as the ''national debt." 
He told the creditors he would pay them, and they be- 
lieved him. The notes, with the high interest then 
prevailing, were finally paid while Lincoln was a mem- 
ber of Congress. Afterwards he told a friend: 
''That debt was the greatest obstacle in my life." Allen 
Thorndike Rice says : 

Ruined by a drunken partner, he failed, but as money 
came to him he paid his honest debts. ^ 

It is quite in harmony with the cruelty of the alco- 
holic liquor traffic, which ruined Lincoln's business 
through his associate, to spread a slander upon the 
memory of the innocent sufferer. The saloon inter- 
ests even now try tO' lend to their traffic a cloak of re- 
spectability by using the name of Lincoln and claim- 
ing him as a business partner.^.-. 

Dr. Sturtevant records that when he was a boy he 
saw Lincoln many times. His father, President 
Sturtevant, of Jacksonville, one of Lincoln's friends 
and advisers, came home one day from a trip and said 
in the family circle : "I saw Abraham Lincoln on the 

^ Rice, "Reminiscences," p. 4. 



30 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

train. I said to him : 'Many of us are praying for your 
success at the polls.' Lincoln, as one of those sad 
flashes passed over his face, replied : 'I don't know, 
President Sturtevant, I don't know. We are dealing 
with men who had just as soon lie as not.' " So, after 
Lincoln's death, the liquor advocates, in their propa- 
ganda, have not hesitated to make false statements 
and have even fabricated speeches in favor of their 
cause. 

Dr. Sturtevant admits that, while Lincoln never was 
a saloonkeeper, probably as a storekeeper he did for a 
little while sell liquor, but he adds : 

That is not strange, considering the ideas of the time 
and the circumstances of his bringing-up. But, consid- 
ering the views of the people with whom I spent my 
youth, it seems impossible that there could have been 
anything seriously wTong in Lincoln's habits about the 
use of liquor, and I never heard of it. 

Lincoln's own account of his mercantile experience 
we find in the short autobiography written in June, 
i860, compiled for use in preparing a campaign bi- 
ography. After his return from the Black Hawk 
war he was a candidate for the Legislature. This was 
the first time he ran for office, and, as he says, *'the 
only time he was ever beaten on the direct vote of 
the people." He was now without means and out of 
business, but was anxious to remain with his friends, 
who had treated him with so much generosity, espe- 
cially as he had nowhere else to go. He studied what 
he should do : thought of learning the blacksmith trade, 
thought of trying to study law, — rather thought he 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 31 

could not succeed at that without a better education. 
Before long, strangely enough, a man offered to sell 
and did sell to Lincoln and another as poor as himself 
an old stock of goods upon credit; and he says that 
was the store. Of course they did nothing but get 
deeper and deeper in debt. At that time Lincoln was 
appointed postmaster at New Salem. The store 
"winked out." 

The advocates of the saloon have not only claimed 
that Lincoln drank ; they have also tried to make it ap- 
pear that he was a liquor-seller. There can be found 
in the windows of saloons what is styled, ''Reproduc- 
tion from the original records of the saloon license is- 
sued to Abraham Lincoln," published by the National 
Retail Liquor Dealers' Association. 

This document was a "license to keep a tavern" 
where liquors were to be sold. There is not the slight- 
est evidence that Mr. Lincoln ever knew of the appli- 
cation. His name is signed to the bond, as Miss Tar- 
bell says, "by some other than himself, very likely by 
his partner," the dissolute Berry heretofore referred 
to. The partnership had been in a store which, be- 
cause of Berry's drinking habits and Lincoln's inex- 
perience, was a financial failure, and the debts of which 
burdened Lincoln many years.^ Nicolay and Hay 
say "the tavern was never opened," and yet the liquor 
people publish a picture of "the building where Abra- 
ham Lincoln conducted a saloon." ^ 

'Tarbell, "Life of Lincoln," Vol. I, p. 96. 

^ "The tavern was never opened, for about this time Lincoln 
and Berry were challenged to sell out to a pair of vagrant 
brothers named Trent, who, as they had no idea of paying, 
were willing to give their notes for any amount. They soon 



32 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate at Ottawa, 
August 21, 1858, in his reply to Douglas' statement 
that he had been a grocery keeper, Lincoln said : 'The 
Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lin- 
coln being a grocery keeper. I don't know as it would 
be a great sin if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lin- 
coln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It 
is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one win- 
ter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow." 

The New York Sun, in an editorial on *The Little 
Still House," referring to the charge of Douglas, said : 

Of course if he kept a grocery in the days of his young 
manhood, he sold rum. Wet goods were an invaluable 
source or attraction of custom in the "store." Deacons 
vended whiskey and gin. A grocer was a grog-seller, 
but Lincoln, speaking whimsically in the third person, 
said he had never kept a grocery, but had worked in a 
little still house. From this little still house at the head 
of a hollow grew Douglas' grocery which was trans- 
formed into a doggery. It is possible enough that Lin- 
coln's ''saloon license" exists in fac-simile as an ornament 
of saloons. The House that Jack Built is the progressive 
order of the architecture of myth. 

The Lincoln legend-making or folk history goes on. 
. . . Possibly some wag will yet build the little still house 
at the end of the hollow, discover it and get an associa- 
tion to buy it. The renewed interest in Lincoln's "liquor 

ran away, and Berry expired, extinguished in rum. Lincoln 
was thus left loaded with debts and with no assets except worth- 
less notes of Berry and the Trents, It is greatly to his credit 
that he never thought of doing to others as they had done by 
him ; ... he paid at last every farthing of the debt." Nicolay 
and Hay, Vol. I, p. iii. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 33 

license" may indicate that he is to figure as a witness 
against the drys. 

As to the faihire of the store of Berry and Lincoln, 
Leonard Swett states that Lincoln was absent several 
months in the Black Hawk war and continues : 

As he returned home he found his old partner had been 
his own best customer at the whiskey barrel, that all the 
goods were gone, but having failed to pay the debts, 
there were eleven hundred dollars for which Lincoln was 
jointly liable. I cannot forget his face of seriousness as 
he turned to me and said: ''That debt was the greatest 
obstacle I have ever met in life. I had no way of specu- 
lating and could not earn money except by labor, and to 
earn eleven hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed 
the work of a lifetime. There was, however, but one 
way. I went to the creditors and told them if they 
would let me alone I would give them all I could earn 
over my living, as fast as I could earn it." 

Mr. Swett says further : 

A difference, however, soon arose between him and 
his partner in reference to the introduction of whiskey 
into the establishment. The partner insisted that, as 
honey catches flies, a barrel of whiskey in the store would 
invite customers and their sales would increase, while 
Lincoln, who never liked liquor, opposed this innovation.® 

Henry B. Rankin refers to "Lincoln's partner in 
the store at Salem, whose unfortunate habit of drink- 

* Rice, "Reminiscences," p. '^'j. 



34 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

ing brought so great a disaster upon the business that 
it was not until 1850 that Lincoln was able to pay the 
last debt of the firm." ^ 

W. H. Herndon, the long-time partner of Lincoln, 
was a peculiar man with many brilliant gifts and many 
weaknesses. He is thus described by Joseph Fort 
Newton : 

All through his career, after it had a beginning, he had 
a hard fight with the drink habit, with many victories 
and occasional bitter defeats ; a battle which Lincoln 
watched with never- failing pity. That was environment, 
very tragical in his case and characteristic of the period. 
But Lincoln knew Herndon, his abilities and his failings, 
his qualities of mind and heart, and the two men loved 
each other like brothers of unequal age.^ 

Lincoln, as President and Commander-in-Chief of 
the army, had a number of painful and perplexing ex- 
periences caused by drinking generals. Colonel Maus, 
for years connected with the regular army, and noted 
in medical and military affairs, says: ''Half of the 
disasters, both personal and general, in military life 
were due to alcohol." The result of a number of bat- 
tles in the Civil War was affected by the condition of 
commanders under the influence of .drink. 

The great reputation of General U. S. Grant cannot 
now be affected by the true statement that his great ca- 
reer was near wreckage several times because of drink. 

'H. B. Rankin, p. 78. 

* Joseph Fort Newton, "Lincoln and Herndon," p. 18. Dr. 
Newton is now pastor of the City Temple, London, England. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 35 

The case is of so much interest and importance that 
particulars may be given to show how nearly General 
John Barleycorn robbed us of our greatest military 
chieftain. 

As a young man, Grant was almost a Puritan in 
his life and habits. He learned to use both liquor 
and tobacco during the Mexican War, — after he was 
twenty-five years of age. He was easily affected by 
liquor, and a single glass produced a visible effect. 
He himself fully realized his danger, and after his re- 
turn from Mexico he helped organize in the barracks 
a lodge of the "Sons of Temperance/' giving its work 
hearty encouragement. 

When promoted to a captaincy Grant was sent to 
the Pacific coast. There he had dreary surroundings 
and an unsympathetic commander, and on one occa- 
sion, under the influence of liquor, he was unable to 
perform his duty. His colonel told him to "reform 
or resign." Grant said : 'T will resign and reform." 
Following his resignation came years of poverty and 
struggle in St. Louis. He drank at intervals, but 
through the influence of his wife seemed to win a vic- 
tory over his habits.^ 

The California record stood in the way of Grant's 
getting rank and position at the opening of the war. 
Generals Fremont, McClellan, and Pope treated him 
as a man with a doubtful past. After he had won 
recognition and w^as commissioned as Brigadier-Gen- 

® Hamlin Garland, ''Life of Grant," p. 127. In the lately pub- 
lished letters of Mark Twain there is a remarkable letter on 
General Grant's drinking habits. 



36 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

eral there were occasions when he yielded to the old 
appetite, and it required the loving care of his wife 
and the devoted friendship of his chief of staff, Gen- 
eral Rawlins, to guard him from the danger of drink. 
To quote James Ford Rhodes in this connection, he 
says that at the time of the siege of Vicksburg, while 
suffering from lassitude and depression during the 
hot weather, "Grant on one occasion yielded to his ap- 
petite for drink." Following this lapse, General Raw- 
lins wrote to Grant the remarkable letter in which he 
said: 

The great solicitude I feel for the safety of this army 
leads me to mention what I had hoped never again to do, 
the subject of your drinking. . . . To-night I find you 
where the wine bottle has just been emptied, in company 
with those who drink and urge you to do likewise, and 
the lack of your usual promptness of decision and clear- 
ness in expressing yourself in writing tended to confirm 
my suspicions. . . . You have the full control of your 
appetite and can let drinking alone. Had you not pledged 
me the sincerity of your honor early last March that you 
would drink no more during the war, and kept your 
pledge during your recent campaign, you would not to- 
day have stood first in the world's history as a successful 
military leader. Your only salvation depends upon your 
strict adherence to that pledge. You cannot succeed in 
any other way. 

Rhodes then relates how ''Rawlins removed a box of 
wine in front of Grant's tent that had been sent him to 
celebrate his prospective entrance into Vicksburg, and 
next morning he searched every suspected tent for liq- 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 37 

uor and broke every bottle he found on a neaby stump." 
After citing Lincoln's words uttered when Lee was 
invading Pennsylvania and Hooker was still in com- 
mand of the Army of the Potomac, — ''How much de- 
pends in military matters on one master mind !'' — 
Rhodes compares Grant and the Confederate com- 
manders, adding: 

"He was a greater general than 'Stonewall' Jack- 
son, but he might have been still greater could he have 
said with Jackson, — changing only the name of Fed- 
eral tO' Confederate, — 'I love whiskey, but I never use 
it; I am more afraid of it than I am of Confederate 
bullets." 

And he goes on to say : 

"The anxiety of the President and his advisers over 
the Vicksburg campaign was intense, and their domi- 
nant idea as expressed by a friend of Stanton's was, 
Tf we keep Grant sober we shall take Vicksburg.' " ^^ 

One more reference is made by Rhodes to the weak- 
ness of the great General, which overcame him after 
the unsuccessful attack on Petersburg, when "the bit- 
terness of disappointment drove him for a while to 
drink." 

According to Rawlins, "Grant digressed from his 
true path" twice after this, but after the last deviation 
he pulled himself together and did not again falter. 
i\nd Rhodes adds: 

It was an unclouded brain that carried on the siege of 
Petersburg to its capture, forced the evacuation of Rich- 

" James Ford Rhodes, "History of the Civil War," pp. 255, 256. 



38 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

mond, and effected the final discomfiture of Lee and the 
ruin of the Southern Confederacy/^ 

President Lincohi was repeatedly warned as to 
Grant's habits, but there can be no doubt that the re- 
ports as tO' his excesses were greatly exaggerated. 
When men visited the President and urged Grant's re- 
moval from his high command because he drank, Lin- 
coln said : 

''I can't spare this man ; he fights. Tell me the kind 
of whiskey he drinks; I should like to send a barrel 
to some of the other generals." 

This bit of grim pleasantry brings to mind the story 
of King George of England, who, when told that Ad- 
miral Nelson of Trafalgar fame was ''mad," said : 
*T will get him to bite some of the other offtcers." 

The case of General Hooker cost Lincoln many 
hours of anxious suffering. When 'Tighting Joe" 
was appointed to the command of the Army of the 
Potomac the President had been advised about his 
weakness for liquor, and plainly warned him about it. 
At the disastrous battle of Chancellorsville it was 
charged that during the engagement Llooker drank 
freely to celebrate his early successes in the battle. 
General Carl Schurz, however, expresses doubts about 
Hooker's intoxication at that time. He says : 

The weight of competent witnesses is strongly against 
this theory. It is asserted, on the other hand, that he 
was accustomed to the consumption of a certain quantity 
of whiskey every day; that during the battle he utterly 

"James Ford Rhodes, "History of the Civil War," p. 325. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 39 

abstained from his usual potations, for fear of taking 
too much inadvertently, and that his brain failed to work 
because he had not given it the stimulus to which it had 
been habituated. ^- 



General O. O. Howard thus refers tO' this instance 
of defeat through drink in the war for the LTnion : 

In one of our great battles we suffered defeat and 
many of us have believed that the mistake which caused 
the defeat was due to an excess of whiskey drunk by the 
officer in command. I had the testimony, from an offi- 
cer who was with him, that pitchers of liquor were 
brought to his table and that he and those around him 
drank as freely from them as if they contained only 
water. The orders the commander gave were the di- 
rect opposite from what he would have given had he not 
been suddenly confused by drink. A heavy loss of men 
and material and a dreadful defeat for our cause was 
the result.^" 



There has been much controversy over General 
Hooker's apparent stupefaction at the crisis of the bat- 
tle. Some have believed that he was disabled by the 
shock of a cannon-ball striking a post near which he 
was standing. 

Secretary of the Navy Welles, in his "Diary," makes 
this record : 

Sumner expresses an absolute want of confidence in 
Hooker, saying he knows him to be a blasphemous 

^^"Reminiscences of Carl Schurz," Vol. II, p. 430. 
" "Autobiography of O. O. Howard." 



40 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

wretch, that after crossing the Rappahannock and reach- 
ing Centerville, Hooker exultingly exclaimed, "The en- 
emy are in my power and God Ahiiighty cannot deprive 
me of them." I have heard before of this, but not so 
direct or positive. The sudden paralysis that followed 
when the army, in the midst of a successful career, was 
suddenly checked and commenced its retreat, has never 
been explained. Whiskey is said by Sumner to have 
done the work. The President said that if Hooker had 
been killed by the shock which knocked over the pillar 
that stunned him we would have been successful.^* 

The bloody and humiliating defeat at Chancellors- 
ville caused Mr. Lincoln great suffering. Whether we 
accept the Schurz explanation of Hooker's abstinence 
from his habitual potations of whiskey or Sumner's 
belief in his actual drunkenness, drink was the cause 
of the disaster. 

Lincoln's suffering when he received the news of 
the retreat of the army was most intense. Noah 
Brooks who, with an old friend of Lincoln's, was 
waiting in the White House, says : 

A door opened, and Lincoln appeared, holding an open 
telegram in his hand. The sight of his face and figure 
was frightful. He seemed stricken with death. Almost 
tottering to a chair, he sat down, and then I mechanically 
noticed that his face was of the same color as the wall 
behind him — not pale, not even sallow, but gray like 
ashes. Extending the dispatch to me, he said with a hol- 
low, far-off voice, "Read it — news from the army." The 
telegram was from General Butterfield, then, I think, 

" "Diary of Gideon Welles," Vol. I, p. 2>3^. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 41 

chief of staff to Hooker. It was very brief, simply say- 
ing that the Army of the Potomac had "safely recrossed 
the Rappahannock" and was now at its old position on 
the north bank of that stream. The President's friend, 
Dr. Henry, an old man and somewhat impressionable, 
bnrst into tears, not so much, probably, at the news as 
on account of its effect upon Lincoln. The President 
regarded the old man for an instant with dry eyes, and 
said, "What will the country say? Oh, what will the 
country say?" He seemed hungry for consolation and 
cheer, and sat a little while talking about the failure. Yet 
it did not seem that he was disappointed so much for 
himself, but that he thought the country would be.^' 

This disaster prompted the striking poem of E. C. 
Stedman, entitled, "Wanted, A Man." Lincoln was 
so impressed with it, that he read to his cabinet the 
poem,^^ which runs: 

Back from the trebly crimsoned field 
Terrible words are thunder-tossed ; 
Full of the wrath that will not yield, 
Full of revenge for battles lost. 
Hark to their echo, as it crossed 
The capital, making faces wan, 
End this murderous holocaiist — 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man! 

No leader to shirk the boasting foe 

And to march and countermarch our brave 

Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low 

And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave ; 

Nor another whose fatal banners wave 

Aye in Disaster's shameful van ; 

Nor another to bulster and lie and rave — 

Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man! 

" Noah Brooks, "Life of Lincoln." 

"Browne, "Every Day Life of Lincoln," p. 494. 



42 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Is there never one in all the land, 

One on whose might the Cause may lean? 

Are all the common ones so mean ? 

What if your failure may have been 

In trying to make good bread from bran, 

From worthless metal a weapon keen? 

Abraham Lincoln, find us a Man! 

There is no official record of the large number of 
officers whose resignations were forced on account of 
their drink habits, but it is generally known that many 
were dismissed by courts martial, on account of their 
conduct while under the influence of liquor. 

Mr. Lincoln endured much mortification from the 
drinking excesses of Vice-President Johnson. ''When 
the Republicans were denouncing Andrew Johnson 
after his maudlin speech on the 4th of March, 1865, 
he only said, 'Poor Andy,' and expressed the hope that 
he would profit by his dreadful mistakes." 

In the awful tragedy of Lincoln's assassination 
liquor had its part. Nicolay and Hay give a vivid de- 
scription of the scenes associated with that calamity. 
They refer to the assassin in this way : "Partisan 
hate and the fumes of brandy had for weeks kept his 
brain in a morbid state." Booth and his co-conspira- 
tors held their councils in saloons and barrooms. 
"Just before he entered the theater for his murderous 
attack, he rushed into a near-by saloon, ordered a 
glass of brandy and gulped it down." ^'^ 

It is a grim comment on the heartlessness as well 
as the stupidity of the liquor traffic that at the cen- 

" Nicolay and Hay, Vol. X, p. 295. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 43 

tennial celebration of Lincoln's birthday, in this Wash- 
ington saloon was this notice : 

Here is where John Wilkes Booth got his last 
Drink. 

Lord Charnwood, referring to the assassin Booth, 
said: 

In him that peculiarly ferocious political passion which 
occasionally showed itself among Southerners was fur- 
ther inflamed by brandy and by that ranting mode of 
thought which the stage develops in some few.^^ 

William H. Crook says: 

Booth had found it necessary to stimulate himself with 
whiskey in order to reach the proper pitch of fanaticism. 

Speaking of the last days of Lincoln's life. Crook 
writes : 

In crossing over to the War Department we passed 
some drunken men. Possibly their violence suggested 
the thought to the President. After we had passed them, 
Mr. Lincoln said to me, "Crook, do you know I believe 
there are men who want to take my life?" Then after 
a pause he said, half to himself, ''And I have no doubt 
they will do it." Crook, dismayed, asked, "Why do you 
think so?" His reply was: "Other men have been as- 
sassinated. ... If it is to be done it is impossible to pre- 
vent it." ^^ 

" Charnwood, "Abraham Lincohi," p. 448. 

^® Crook, "Through Five Administrations," pp. 66, ^Z- 



CHAPTER III 

LINCOLN AS AN ABSTAINER 

Abraham Lincoln was a man of remarkable physi- 
cal strength, and to the end of his life was capable of 
enduring tests that would crush most men. 

'The sturdy constitution that Lincoln inherited from 
five generations of pioneers," says Arnold, one of his 
biographers, "was hardened by the toil and exposure 
to which, even more than most backwoods boys, he 
was subjected from early childhood." 

One of the well authenticated stories of his great 
strength is directly connected with licjuor. A friend, 
William G. Greene, made a wager that Lincoln could 
lift a cask holding forty gallons of whiskey high 
enough to drink out of the bunghole. It is said that 
''he squatted down and lifted the cask to his knees, 
rolling it over until his mouth was opposite the bung." 
His friend Greene cried out, 'T have won my bet, but 
that is the first dram of whiskey I ever saw you swal- 
low, Abe." "And I haven't swallowed that, you see," 
said Lincoln as he spurted out the liquor.^ Comment- 
ing on this anecdote, Mr. Arnold writes: 

In this final episode of the little story is to be found 
a clue, if not to the source of his extraordinary vigor, 

^ Whitney, "Life of Lincoln," p. 85. 

45 



46 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

at least to its continued preservation, unimpaired by the 
vices that have shorn so many Samsons of their strength. 
. . . He grew up strong in body, healthful in mind, with 
no bad habits, no stain of intemperance, profanity or vice. 
He used neither tobacco nor intoxicating drinks, and thus 
living he grew to be six feet four inches high and a giant 
in strength.^ 



So remarkable were Lincoln's feats of strength in 
wrestling, lifting heavy weights, chopping dow^n trees 
and splitting rails, that he has been called a *' Samson 
of the backwoods." He had the strength of a giant, 
united with all the signs of a physical health that would 
have carried him to a great age. His freedom from 
every form of vice was in entire harmony with the 
advanced ethical ideas of our day. 

In the time of his young manhood the great men 
that Lincoln specially admired were Clay and Web- 
ster, and both of these were excessive drinkers. 
Stephen A. Douglas, his longtime political opponent, 
was a remarkable man, but in marked contrast to Lin- 
coln in personal habits as well as in moral ideals. Hor- 
ace White says of Douglas: "Although patriotic be- 
yond a doubt, he was color-blind to moral principles 
in politics and stone-blind to the evils of slavery." ^ 
Douglas was also so given to drink that he was unable 
to fill a number of public engagements because of his 
drunken condition; and the last days of his life were 
filled with excessive drinking. 

^ Arnold, "Life of Abraham Lincoln," p. 26. 
^ Horace White's pamphlet, "Lincoln in 1854." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 47 

The incident related by Mr. Greene occurred long 
before the modern discovery that alcohol was not a 
stimulant but a poison, and that instead of being a help 
to strength it is a source of weakness. Lincoln's an- 
tagonism to drink seems to have been instinctive. 
There are also traditions that his mother warned her 
boy of the dangers of drink and made him promise 
to be an abstainer. 

Herndon says : 

^ New Salem was what in the modern parlance of large 
cities would be called a fast place, and it was difficult for 
a young man of ordinary moral courage to resist the 
temptations that beset him on every hand. It remains a 
matter of surprise that Lincoln was able to retain his 
popularity with the hosts of young men of his own age 
and still not join them in their drinking bouts and 
carousals. One of his companions said, 'T am certain 
that he never drank any intoxicating liquors ; he did not 
even, in tliose days, smoke or chew tobacco." ^ 

As to life in New Salem, Lord Charnwood has this 
to say : 

It never got much beyond a population of one hundred, 
and, like many similar little towns of the West, it has 
long since perished from the earth. But it was a busy 
place for awhile, and, contrary to what its name might 
suggest, it aspired to be rather fast. It was a cock- 
fighting and whiskey-drinking society into which Lm- 
coln was launched. He managed to combine strict ab- 
stinence from liquor with keen participation in all its 
other diversions.^ 

* Herndon and Weik, p. io8. 

"Lord Charnwood, "Abraham Lincohi," p. 63. 



48 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Lincoln stated many times that he never drank Hq- 
tior, and his OAvn repeated declaration ought to have 
long ago silenced the charges of the champions of alco- 
holic beverages. 

Because the liquor dealers' associations continue, 
however, to circulate these slanders, it is necessary to 
repeat the record of the actual facts. Wherever there 
is a saloon contest, posters and circulars are issued by 
the advocates of alcohol claiming that Lincoln used 
liquor as a beverage. Some years ago a man de- 
clared that he had been on intimate terms of friend- 
ship with Lincoln and that repeatedly they drank whis- 
key together. The interview in which this declara- 
tion was made was widely published in the newspapers. 
In order to establish either the truth or falsity of the 
statement, letters of inquiry were written to the only 
survivor of Lincoln's family, — his son, Robert T. Lin- 
coln, — and to his secretaries and biographers. Hay and 
Nicolay. Their replies, in possession of the author, 
are as follows : 

(Private) 

4 Dec, '94, 
The Temple, Chicago. 
My dear Sir : 

Assuming that you will make no publication of my 
reply to your inquiry, for I never deny a newspaper 
statement publicly, it gives me pleasure to let you know 
that my father seemed to be absolutely devoid of the 
taste which is gratified by wine or liquor of any kind. I 
have seen him several times take a sip of wine at table, 
but if he ever did anything more I do not know it. He 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 49 

simply cared nothing for it. Never heard him speak of 
the matter in any way. 

Very truly yours, 

Robert T. Lincoln. 

Western Reserve Building, 

Cleveland, Ohio. 

Nov. 24, 1894. 
Dear Sir: 

Mr. Lincoln was a man of extremely temperate habits. 
He made no use of either whiskey or tobacco during all 
the years that I knew him. 

Yours very truly, 

John Hay. 

Washington, D. C, 

Nov. 24, 1894. 
My dear Sir : 

In ^ reply to your inquiry whether Abraham Lincoln 
vi^as **in the habit of drinking whiskey'' I answer that 
during all the nearly five years of my service as his pri- 
vate secretary I never saw him take a drink of whiskey, 
and never knew or heard of his taking one. The story 
of his "being in the habit of drinking whiskey and some- 
what accomplished in that line" is a pure fabrication. 

Allow me also to refer you to Mr. Lincoln's "Address 
before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Soci- 
ety,'' February 22, 1842, printed in full on pages 57 to 
64 in Volume I of our "Abraham Lincoln— Complete 
Works." 

Yours truly, 

Jno. G. Nicolay. 

Another of Lincoln's secretaries, William O. Stod- 
dard, still living at this writing, writes from Madison, 



50 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

New Jersey, June 30, 191 7, in reply to a letter of 
inquiry : 

You have somewhat surprised me. I did not know 
that at this late day there was any question of contro- 
versy as to the lifelong conduct and position of Abraham 
Lincoln on the temperance question. 

Robert T. Lincoln's letter is marked ''Private," but 
in a later note, dated June 30, 191 5, he says: ''I have 
no objection to your printing the letter I wrote to you 
on December 4, 1894." It will be noticed that in that 
letter he wrote : '1 have seen him several times take 
a sip of wine at the table, but if he ever did anything 
more I do not know it." It is evident that Lincoln 
himself did not regard this taking a sip of wine as vio- 
lating the spirit of his repeated pledges of total ab- 
stinence. 

In addition to the pledge he took and urged upon 
others of the Washingtonian Society, there is the fol- 
lowing pledge of total abstinence given by him on 
January 19, 1838, in connection with the Sangamon 
Temperance Society: 

The members of this society agree not to use intoxi- 
cating liquor or provide it as an article of refreshment 
for their friends nor for persons in their employment, 
nor will they use, manufacture, or traffic in the same ex- 
cept for chemical, mechanical, medicinal, and sacramen- 
tal purposes. 

Mr. Lincoln added to his pledge : ''specially never 
to drink ardent spirits." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 51 

It is interesting to note that Lincoln was not a mem- 
ber of any fraternal organization, except those relat- 
ing to temperance. He was a member of the Sons 
of Temperance. The pledge of this order was as fol- 
lows : 

I will neither make, buy, sell nor use as a beverage 
any spirituous or malt liquors, wine, or cider. 

Leonard Swett, an intimate personal friend of Lin- 
coln's, says of him : 

Not more than a year before he was elected President 
he told me that he had never tasted liquor in his life. 
"What?" I said, "do you mean to say you never tasted 
it?" "Yes, I never tasted it." 

Shelby M. Cullom, also an intimate friend of Lin- 
coln's, who lived in Springfield most of his life, and 
who served his State as Governor and for several 
terms as United States Senator, said, in contradiction 
of the report that Lincoln drank : 

Lincoln never drank, smoked, or chewed tobacco, or 
swore. He was a man of the most simple habits. I re- 
call distinctly when a committee of Springfield citizens, 
including myself, called at Lincoln's house, after he was 
nominated for President, to talk over with him the ar- 
rangements for receiving the committee on notification. 
Lincoln said : "Boys, I never had a drop of liquor in 
my whole life, and I don't want to begin now." ^ 

Concerning the historic occasion when Lincoln re- 
ceived official notice of his nomination for the Presi- 
" Chicago Record-Herald, March 16, 1908. 



52 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

dency by the Chicago convention, we have a great va- 
riety of testimony, differing in some minor points, 
but all agreeing in the fact that he declined to provide 
liquors for the entertainment of the committee. Car- 
penter, who painted the picture of Lincoln and his 
cabinet, gives the following report of what took place 
at the meeting: 

After the ceremony had passed [the notification and 
Lincoln's reply], Mr. Lincoln remarked to the company 
that as an appropriate conclusion to an interview so im- 
portant and interesting as that which had just trans- 
pired, he supposed good manners would require that he 
should treat the committee with something to drink, and, 
opening a door that led into a room in the rear, he called 
out, "Mary ! Mary !" A girl replied to the call, to whom 
Mr. Lincoln spoke a few words in an undertone, and, 
closing the door, he returned again to converse with his 
guests. In a few minutes the maid entered, bearing 
several glass tumblers and a large pitcher in the midst, 
and placed them upon the center-table. Mr. Lincoln 
arose, and, gravely addressing the company, said : "Gen- 
tlemen, we must pledge our mutual healths in the most 
healthy beverage which God has given to men. It is the 
only beverage I have ever used or allowed in my family, 
and I cannot consistently depart from it on the present 
occasion. It is pure Adam's ale from the spring." And, 
taking the tumbler, he touched it to his lips and pledged 
them his highest respects in a cup of cold water. Of 
course all his guests were constrained to admire his con- 
sistency and to join in his example.'^ 

^ "Six Months in the White House," p. 125. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 53 

Charles Carleton Coffin, who was present at the 
ceremony, says that after responding to the formal 
notification, Lincoln said : 

Mrs. Lincoln will be pleased to see you, gentlemen. 
You will find her in the other room. You must be 
thirsty after your long ride. You will find a pitcher of 
water in the library. 

Entering the library, they found ''a plain table with 
writing-materials upon it, a pitcher of cold water and 
glasses, but no wines or liquors." Mr. Coffin also re- 
ports that a citizen of Springfield told him that sev- 
eral citizens called on Mr. Lincoln and suggested to 
him that some entertainment should be provided, of- 
fering at the same time to supply the needful liquors. 
Mr. Lincoln replied: 

Gentlemen, I thank you for your kind intentions, but 
must respectfully decline your offer. I have no liquor 
in my house and have never been in the habit of enter- 
taining my friends in that way. I cannot permit my 
friends to do for me what I will not myself do. I shall 
provide cold water — nothing else.^ 

Lincoln's letter- to J. Mason Haight, of California, 
who made inc[uiry about the serving of liquors, is clear 
and conclusive. Shortly after Mr. Lincoln's formal 
notification, as above recited, Mr. Haight wrote Lin- 
coln a letter wishing to know whether liquors were or 
were not served on that occasion. In reply he re- 
ceived the following : 

^ Charles Carleton Coffin, "Reminiscences of Abraham Lin- 
coln," p. 174. 



54 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Private and Confidential. 

Springfield, III., June ii, i860. 
J. Mason Haight, Esq. 
JV^Y DEAR Sir : 

I think it would be improper for me to write or say 
anything to or for the public, upon the subject of which 
you inquire. I therefore wish the little I do write to be 
held as strictly confidential. Having kept house sixteen 
years and having never held the cup to the lips of my 
friends there, my judgment was that I should not, in my 
new position, change my habit in this respect. What 
actually occurred upon the occasion of the committee vis- 
iting me I think it would be better for others to say. 
Yours respectfully, 

A Lincoln. 

Lieutenant-Governor Koerner, a noted enemy of 
prohibition, but a friend of Lincoln, was at the noti- 
fication meeting. His reference to the absence of 
liquor is rather amusing. He said : "Ice water, it 
being a very hot evening, was the only refreshment 
served.' ^ 

Robert J. Halle, editor of the liquor paper, Cham- 
pion of Fair Play, makes special criticism of John 
Hay's letter of November 24, 1894, and questions its 
genuineness, saying: 

The letter is most cunningly worded, and, even if 
genuine, is very inconclusive; the letter is undated and 
the name of the person to whom it is supposed to have 
been sent carefully omitted ; it makes reference to only 
one kind of alcoholic beverage, viz., whiskey. 

""Life of Koerner," Vol. II, p. 94. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 55 

Mr. Halle asks why the name of only one liquor is 
mentioned, and concludes: ''The natural inference is 
that Lincoln drank some of the other kinds, to his pri- 
vate secretary's knowledge." 

In the letter to Mr. Hay, to which he replied, he 
was asked explicitly about the claim of the man who 
said Mr. Lincoln "drank whiskey." The facsimile 
of Mr. Hay's letter has been widely published, and no 
one familiar with his handwriting ever challenged the 
genuineness of the document. 

The most pitiful attempt the liquor men have made 
to try to prove that Lincoln used liquor as a beverage 
is their publication in fac-simile of a page in the ledger 
of the Springfield drugstore of Corneau & Diller, which 
shows that during a number of months several charges 
were made for brandy.^^ R. W. Diller, who was one 
of Lincoln's intimate friends, denounced with indig- 
nation the stories that Lincoln drank. ^^ 

" Robert J. Halle, the editor of the Chicago Liquor paper, 
The Champion of Fair Play, is the author of a pamphlet en- 
titled "Lincoln and the Liquor Question," published by the Lit- 
erary Bureau of the National Liquor League of America. It 
repeats all the stories and rumors as to Lincoln's being a saloon- 
keeper and a liquor drinker, gives a picture of the building "in 
which Lincoln kept a saloon," a facsimile of the so-called saloon 
license, and the drug store account of Corneau & Diller. 

Mr. Halle also quotes three times the statement that Lincoln 
declared the injury done by liquor "did not arise from the use 
of a bad thing, but the abuse of a very good thing." This is a 
perversion of Lincoln's words. He was speaking of public opin- 
ion on the use of liquor, and it was acknowledged many were 
greatly injured by it, "but none seemed to think that the injury 
arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very 
good thing," He is stating the popular opinion on the subject; 
and to say he declared that "liquor was a good thing," as his 
personal opinion, is untrue. 

'^L R. Diller, Letter. 



56 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

There are a number of well authenticated incidents 
which illustrate Lincoln's habits of abstinence. Mr. 
Herndon relates that Lincoln told many times the fol- 
lowing story: 

He was traveling in a stage coach, the only other 
passenger being a Kentuckian, who offered him a chew 
of tobacco and was answered : 

*'No, I thank you, I never chew." 

Later on the fellow-traveler offered a cigar, which 
was also politely declined, on the ground that he never 
smoked. As the coach stopped at the station to 
change horses, the Kentuckian poured out a cup of 
brandy and said : 

"Stranger, seeing you do not smoke or chew, per- 
haps you will take a little of this fine French brandy. 
It's a fine article and a good appetizer." 

This last best evidence of hospitality was also de- 
clined by Lincoln ; and when the two separated the man 
said: 

"Stranger, you are a clever but strange companion, 
I may never see you again, and don't want to offend 
you, but my experience has taught me that a man who 
has no vices has blamed few virtues." ^^ 

The stories of Lincoln's drinking are all traceable 
to unreliable sources. As an illustration, there was 
published in a Chicago paper in 1908 the following: 

L. White Busbey, secretary to Speaker Cannon, said 
that he recalled that an old citizen of Illinois once told 

"Herndon and Weik, Vol. I, p. 302. 

A revised version of the story gives these as the questions : 
"Stranger, do you masticate, — do you fumigate, — do you irri- 
gate?" 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 57 

him that Lincohi sold whiskey when he was a country 
storekeeper. "This old man lived in the town where 
Lincoln kept store and Stephen A. Douglas taught 
school," said Mr. Busbey. *'He told me that at the end 
of every school term Lincoln had a slate full of credits 
against Douglas. The barrel was empty and Lincoln 
was broke." 



In the Lincoln-Douglas debates Douglas referred to 
Lincoln as a former grocery-storekeeper. Lincoln re- 
plied : 

'*Yes, I was selling goods behind the counter, and 
Mr. Douglas was drinking before it." 

This passage-at-arms as to selling and buying com- 
prised the only pleasantries of the debate. History 
proves that Lincoln and Douglas never met until 1834, 
and then at Vandalia. Lincoln was then a member of 
the Legislature, while Douglas, who was four years 
Lincoln's junior, was a candidate for State's Attor- 
ney. The New Salem store had ''winked out" long 
before that meeting. 

One of the oldest and most intimate friends of Lin- 
coln was Dr. William Jayne, of Springfield. His sis- 
ter became the wife of Senator Lyman Trumbull, and 
was the bridesmaid at the Lincoln wedding. Dr. 
Jayne was the first Governor of the Territory of Da- 
kota by the appointment of President Lincoln. Paul 
Selby, a pioneer editor and friend of Lincoln, said in 
1908 that Dr. Jayne was one of the few persons then 
living "who knew Lincoln intimately and were accus- 
tomed tO' meet him almost daily in private life and 
frequently enjoyed the hospitality of his home." 



58 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

In a letter to Air. Selby, Dr. Jayne made the fol- 
lowing statement: 

I first knew Mr. Lincoln more than seventy years ago 
— quite well after he came to Springfield in 1837. He 
boarded with William Butler (in 1859 to 1862 State 
Treasurer), the second house west of my father's home, 
from the time he came to Springfield until he married. 
]\Iy father first and I afterward were Butler's family 
physicians. I think I knew Mr. Lincoln as well as any 
man now living in our city except John W. Bunn, who 
politically knew Mr. Lincoln very intimately. I do not 
believe Lincoln ever drank wine or whiskey after he came 
to our city to live. What he may have done prior to 
coming to our city I do not know. He joined the Wash- 
ingtonian Temperance Society, made a temperance 
speech on February 22, 1842, and I have a copy of that 
speech. Mr. Lincoln never served wine to any one in 
his home while he was in Springfield. What he may 
have done in the White House I do not know. I have 
dined with him in the \Miite House, and certainly he had 
then no wine. My opinion is that he never drank any 
spirits in youth. Of his early years, of course, I cannot 
speak with knowledge. 

In an interview Dr. Jayne said further: 

One could with safety wager any sum that no man in 
Springfield ever saw Lincoln take a drink. When the 
committee came to notify him of his nomination, a friend 
sent him a quantity of liquor, but he refused to serve it 
himself or to permit Mrs. Lincoln to do so. He said he 
never had offered drink to any one and he did not intend 
to begin then. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 59 

General John Cook was Colonel of the first regi- 
ment mustered into service from the State, the Sev- 
enth Illinois. He was appointed Brigadier General 
by President Lincoln for meritorious services at Fort 
Donelson. In a letter to Mr. Selby, General Cook 
says : 

My acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln began about 1840, 
or a little before, and from that time until the assassina- 
tion the friendship shown me never relaxed. The story 
of Mr. Lincoln's keeping bar or tending a saloon (called 
a grocery in early days) is purely bosh, and the assertion 
that he was addicted to the use of liquors of any descrip- 
tion whatever is a dastardly calumny. I never knew him 
to take even a social drink with any one, and I never knew 
him to enter a saloon for any purpose. Without ostenta- 
tion he was ever the champion of a total abstinence. 

Speaking of a visit to Washington after Lincoln's 
first inauguration, during which time he was a guest 
at the White House for some three weeks, General 
Cook says: 

I sat at the family table and on suitable occasions was 
permitted to be present at different functions. During 
all of such occasions, as has been the custom from time 
immemorial, wine was ever present, but on no occasion 
did I see Mr. Lincoln raise the glass to his lips.^"'' 

Stephen A. Douglas once attempted to ridicule Mr. 
Lincoln's abstaining habit and asked sneeringly: 
'*What! are you a temperance man?'' 

" Paul Selby, "Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln." 



6o LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

"No," drawled Lincoln, with a smile, "I'm not a 
temperance man, but Fm temperate in this — I don't 
drink." 1^ 

General Horace Porter relates that at one time Lin- 
coln came to City Point on a steamboat to visit Gen- 
eral Grant, and, after giving his greetings and saying 
complimentary things about the hard work of the 
winter's siege, mentioned that he was not feeling well 
because he had been badly shaken up on the boat. A 
staff officer suggested : 

"Let me send for a bottle of champagne for you, 
Mr. President; that's the best remedy I know of for 
seasickness." 

"No, no, my young friend," replied the President, 
"I've seen many a man in my time seasick ashore from 
drinking that very article." 

"That was the last time," General Porter adds, "that 
any one screwed up sufficient courage to offer him 



" Frederick Trevor Hill, "Lincoln the Lawyer," p. 33. 

^^ General Horace Porter, Century Magazine, October, 1885. 



CHAPTER IV 

LINCOLN AS A TEMPERANCE REFORMER 

The name of Abraham Lincoln stands first and fore- 
most in the story of the aboHtion of human slavery, 
and yet Lincoln was not, in a strict sense of the word, 
an abolitionist until he faced the question of emanci- 
pation as a war measure. He hated slavery because 
he believed it to be cruel and unjust. ''If slavery is 
not wrong, nothing is wrong," were his words. Ac- 
cording tO' Herndon, Lincoln looked upon slavery, 
temperance, and universal suffrage as the great ques- 
tions of moral and social reform, and early made this 
declaration. 

"All such questions," he observed one day to Hern- 
don, as they were discussing temperance in their of- 
fice, ''must first find lodgment with the most enlight- 
ened souls who stamp them with their approval. In 
God's own time they will be organized into law, and 
thus woven into the fabric of our institutions." ^ 

Heretofore there has been no general recognition 
of Lincoln's notable relation to temperance reform. 
The facts are, however, that he not only gave his per- 
sonal example by lifelong abstinence, but he also iden- 
tified himself actively with the first widespread popu- 

^ Herndon and Weik, p. 158. 

61 



62 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

lar movement to advance the temperance cause. In 
the Washingtonian movement he not only gave his 
pubHc example by taking the pledge, but he made a 
personal canvass, spoke on many occasions, and as a 
climax he delivered in behalf of the reform a great 
address, which is a classic. 

It must be remembered that most of Lincoln's tem- 
perance speeches were delivered in obscure places be- 
fore he became a man of prominnce and wdien his 
views upon public questions were not regarded as of 
special value. 

The temperance reformation of wdiich the modern 
movement is a continuance began in an effective and 
organized way in 1825.^ At the close of the Revolu- 
tion the evils of intemperance were greatly increased. 
The one name to be specially honored in the awak- 
ening of the American people is that of Dr. Benjamin 
Rush of Philadelphia. He was the most distinguished 
physician of the country, and had also a large place 
in connection with the independence of the Colonies. 
As a member of the Continental Congress of 1776 he 
was one of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and a member of the Constitutional Con- 
vention of 1787. He was a leading advocate of free 
schools and of the education of women, and was one 
of the founders of the first anti-slavery society, organ- 
ized in 1775. 

This distinguished American, holding medals and 
honors from European sources and recognized as a 
leader in humanitarian movements, published in 1785 

^"Temperance Progress," Wooley and Johnson, p. 56. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 63 

his "Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the 
Human Body and Mind." It was a remarkable docu- 
ment and gives forcible statements of the evils of drink 
that are still effective. His arguments, however, were 
against distilled liquors. 

In 181 1, Dr. Rush presented to the General Assem- 
bly of the Presbyterian Church, convened in Philadel- 
phia, a thousand copies of his essay and made an ear- 
nest appeal for some action by the Assembly. As a 
result, a committee was appointed that in 18 12 re- 
ported strongly against intemperance, yet did not de- 
clare for total abstinence. Committees of conference 
with other denominations were appointed, and during 
that year action was taken by the Methodist and Con- 
gregational Churches, which marked the beginning of 
the persistent work of the churches against intem- 
perance. 

In 1825 the Reverend Lyman Beecher preached his 
six sermons on the "Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, 
and Remedy of Intemperance." The publication of 
these sermons, which w^ere translated into several lan- 
guages and widely circulated among other nations, 
was considered the greatest influence in creating a dis- 
tinct sentiment against not only the use of liquor but 
also the traffic itself.^ 

In 1826 The American Society for the Promotion 
of Temperance was formed. This was the beginning 
of a new era, in that the declaration was made that 
the only practical and effective remedy for intemper- 
ance was total abstinence. In the church of Rev. 
^ "Sermons," Lyman Beecher. 



64 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Albert Barnes at Morristown there was a society that 
pledged its members not to drink more than a pint of 
applejack a day as against the usual allowance of a 
cjuart. 

In 1836 the American Temperance Union was or- 
ganized at a convention in Saratoga and took the ad- 
vanced step of extending to all intoxicating liquors 
the principle of total abstinence. 

The next important advance in temperance reform 
was the Washingtonian movement, beginning in 1840. 
Later, in 1849, Father Mathew, the great Irish apostle 
of temperance, visited the United States, held great 
meetings in all parts of the country, and administered 
the pledge to some 600,000 people. Then followed 
the organization of the temperance fraternal societies, 
to preserve the fruits of the previous agitations. The 
first of these was the Sons of Temperance, organized 
in 1842, followed by the Good Templars in 185 1. The 
Congressional Temperance total abstinence society was 
formed in 1842, and added much prestige to the move- 
ment. 

The first prohibitory law was passed in Maine in 
1846. The liquor men made an effort to have all re- 
strictive measures as to the sale of liquor removed. 
Suits were carried to the United States Supreme Court 
from several States. The argument for this appeal 
was made by Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate. In 
handing down his decision on the case, in 1847, Chief 
Justice Taney, noted for his Dred Scott pro-slavery 
decision, said: 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 65 

If any State deems the retail and internal traffic in 
ardent spirits injurious to its citizens and calculated to 
produce illness, vice, and debauchery, I see nothing in the 
Constitution of the United States to prevent it from 
regulating and restraining the traffic or from prohibiting 
it altogether if it thinks proper. 



The National Temperance Society and Publication 
House v^as founded in 1865, and for many years led 
the temperance movements of the country. In 1874 
v^as organized the Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union, the largest and in many ways the most power- 
ful organization in behalf of temperance reform. In 
later days came the pledge-signing total abstinence 
crusades, the organization of church boards and socie- 
ties, the Prohibition Political Party, and the great 
Anti-Saloon League. One of the important results of 
all these movements is that at this time (1918) twenty 
States have voted to ratify the prohibition amendment 
to the Constitution. 

In the days of Lincoln's special activity in temper- 
ance work intense interest on the slavery question 
crowded out other reforms. It is apparent, however, 
that the temperance reform was a close second in Lin- 
coln's heart to abolition. It may be that the delay of 
the triumph over alcohol required the time of the last 
half-century, because it was needful to add to the moral 
sentiment against drink the powerful arguments of 
science, of physical and mental efficiency, and the com- 
ing together of social influences. 



66 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

The Washingtonian Society was founded in the 
barroom of a Baltimore hotel in 1840 by six members 
of a drinking club. One of these was by vocation a 
tailor, another a carpenter, while there were two 
blacksmiths, a coachmaker, and a silversmith. Rev. 
IMatthew Llale Smith was then making temperance ad- 
dresses in the city, and some members of the club 
were sent to hear one of his lectures and report. In 
giving the account, one said that temperance was all 
right. The tavern-keeper, who was a listener, in- 
sisted that the temperance people were hypocrites. 
This provoked the reply : 

"It is to your interest to cry them down." 
It was finally proposed to form a society, the fol- 
lowing pledge being prepared and signed : 

We, whose names are annexed, desirous of forming a 
society for our mutual benefit and to guard against a 
practice — a pernicious practice — which is injurious to our 
health, standing, and families, do pledge ourselves as 
gentlemen that we will not drink any spirits or malt liq- 
uors, wine, or cider. 

In a few months they had seven hundred members. 
John H. W. Hawkins, who had been a confirmed 
drunkard, became their leader and a powerful advo- 
cate of the cause. He ultimately carried the crusade 
to almost every State in the Union, making two visits 
tO' Springfield, Illinois. 

Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler says in his account of the 
pioneer leaders of the temperance cause : 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR (^y 

The greatest single result of this movement was the 
conversion of John B. Goiigh from an obscure and 
wretched young sot into the most brilliant, popular and 
effective advocate of our cause that the world has yet 
seen. 

Dr. Cuyler says further : 

The last name I record is the most illustrious of them 
all— the name of him who in early life defended the prin- 
ciples of total abstinence and who closed his glorious ca- 
reer by binding up the LTnion and by unbinding the 
manacles of tlie slave — the name of our country's best 
beloved, Abraham Lincoln.* 

The Washingtonian movement swept over the coun- 
try Hke wildfire. Popular meetings were held in 
school-houses, halls, and churches. Many of the 
speakers were reformed drunkards who had taken the 
pledge and related their experiences. 

The experience of John B. Gough, as related by 
himself in his "Autobiography," may illustrate the 
methods of the meetings. Gough had gone to the 
lowest depth of poverty and wretchedness, and when 
he was in despair and ready for suicide he was invited 
to one of the meetings by Joel Stratton, a waiter. 
This is his own account : 

When I stood up to relate my story, I recognized my 
acquaintance who asked me to sign. He greeted me with 
a smile of approbation which nerved and strengthened 

* Cuyler, "Temperance in All Nations," Vol. i, p. 21. 



68 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

me for my task as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed 
upon me. I lifted my quivering hand and then and there 
told vv^hat rum had done for me. I related that I had 
once been respectable and happy and had a home, but 
that now I was a homeless, miserable, scathed, diseased, 
and blighted outcast from society. I said scarce a hope 
remained to me of ever becoming that which I once was, 
but, having promised to sign the pledge, I had determined 
not to break my word and would now affix my name to 
it. In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, 
and in characters almost as crooked as those of old 
Stephen Hopkins on the Declaration of Independence I 
signed the total abstinence pledge and resolved to free 
myself from the inexorable tyrant Rum.^ 

Dickens' first visit to America was in 1842, the year 
when the Washingtonian movement was at its height 
and the year in which Lincoln delivered his notable ad- 
dress on Washington's birthday. We find records of 
Dickens' journeys across the country in coaches. In 
one hotel he ate with the boarders, and they had no 
drink but tea and coffee. 

I ask for brandy, but it is a temperance hotel and spir- 
its are not to be had for love or money. 

On visiting the Military Academy at West Point, 
he writes of the hotel that "it had the drawback of be- 
ing a total abstinence house," as wines and liquors were 
forbidden to the cadets. 

On his visit to Cincinnati he wrote of a great tem- 

^ "Aiitobiograph}' of John B. Gough," p. 131. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 69 

perance convention held there on the clay after his ar- 
rival, the parade passing the hotel in which he lodged : 

It comprised several thousand men, the members of 
various Washingtonian auxiliary temperance societies, 
and was marshaled by officers on horseback who cantered 
briskly up and down the line with scarfs and ribbons of 
bright colors fluttering out behind them gaily. ... I was 
particularly pleased to see the Irishmen who formed a 
distinct society among themselves, and mustered very 
strong with their green scarfs — carrying their national 
Harp and their portrait of Father Mathew high above 
their heads. They looked as jolly and good-humored 
as ever, and working here the hardest for their living 
and doing any kind of sturdy labor that came in their 
way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought. 

The banners were very well painted and flaunted down 
the street famously. There was the smiting of the rock, 
the gushing forth of the waters; and there a temperate 
man with ''considerable of a hatchet" (as the standard 
bearer would probably have said) aiming a deadly blow 
at a serpent which was apparently about to spring upon 
him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief 
feature of this part of the show was a huge allegorical de- 
vice, borne among the ship-carpenters, on one side 
whereof' the steamboat Alcohol was represented bursting 
her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while upon 
the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a 
fair wind to the hearts' content of the Captain, crew and 
passengers. 

Dickens also writes of the temperance songs of the 
children of the free schools, and the speeches adapted 
to the occasion, "but the main thing was the conduct 



yo LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

and appearance of the audience throughout the day, 
and that was admirable and full of promise." ^ 

An examination of the newspaper files of that time 
shows that little space was given to reports of meet- 
ings or speeches unless they were related to immedi- 
ate political events; but it is known that Lincoln be- 
came interested in the Washingtonian movement and 
made many speeches in Springfield and throughout 
the adjoining country, advocating total abstinence and 
the signing of the pledge. 

Roland Diller, a longtime resident of Springfield, 
was an intimate personal friend of Lincoln from 1844 
to the end of his life. His drugstore was not far from 
the Lincoln home and was one of the favorite haunts 
of Lincoln and a number of his friends, who fre- 
quently gathered there to tell stories and discuss poli- 
tics.^ 

Dr. Howard Russell, founder of the Anti-Saloon 
League, was in Springfield early in 1900 and visited 
Mr. Diller, to look at some relics of the great Presi- 
dent. Lie said that he was specially interested in tem- 
perance work; whereupon the old druggist told him 
that Lincoln was a pronounced temperance man and 

''Dickens, "American Notes," p. 173; Nelson and Sons. 

^ Letter of Isaac R. Diller : "I never saw my father so 
righteously indignant as when he read the statement by some 
newspaper man that while Lincoln was in the White House he 
saw him pour out four fingers of whiskey in a glass and drink 
it off with relish. Father said it was as black a lie as was ever 
uttered. He said Mr. Lincoln never drank with the other men 
who used to gather in the store and did much drinking. H he 
drank at all there would have been no secrecy about it with 
those friends and associates who used it without any attempt at 
hiding what they did." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 71 

not only never used intoxicating liquor of any kind 
but was also an earnest advocate of the reform. Mr. 
Diller further told Dr. Russell that there were still 
living people who had attended the Washingtonian 
meetings at which Lincoln spoke and who' had taken 
the pledge as given by Mr. Lincoln. 

Some months after this, by arrangement of Mr. Dil- 
ler, Dr. Russell met Cleopas Breckenridge, a farmer 
of Sangamon County and a reputable citizen of high 
standing, who had served in the Civil War as a ser- 
geant in Company D of the Thirty-third Illinois Vol- 
unteer Infantry.^ Mr. Breckenridge remembered that 
in the summer of either 1846 or 1847 ^'^^ had attended 
a temperance meeting in the neighborhood school- 
house, at which Lincoln made the address and gave 
the pledge of total abstinence. 

Lincoln had already gained a reputation as a public 
speaker and as a rising young lawyer, and the notice 
of his coming, said Breckenridge, drew a large crowd. 
Lincoln made an earnest plea for total abstinence. 
When he had finished his address he took from his 
pocket a paper and said : 

"This is what is called the 'Washingtonian Pledge.' 
Many thousands of people throughout the country 
have signed it. I have signed this pledge myself and 
would be glad to have as many of my neighbors as are 
willing sign it with me." 

Many signed it, including Breckenridge, who was 
then ten years old. Lincoln kindly urged him to take 
the pledge, and when the boy had given his name, said 
^ "Lincoln Legion," Banks, p. 30. 



72 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

to him : "You keep that pledge, and it will be the best 
act of your life." 

Breckenridge said he had always felt under a sol- 
emn obligation to keep the pledge Lincoln had given 
hmi, and under many temptations in the war and amid 
other surroundings had never broken it, counting it 
an essential element in a successful life. 

Breckenridge further gave Dr. Russell the names 
of others still living who had taken the pledge at the 
hands of Lincoln at this meeting at South Fork school- 
house in 1847. Two of them, R. E. Berry and Moses 
Martm, gave accounts similar to that rendered by 
Breckenridge, and all three of the men made their af- 
fidavits to the facts as stated by them. 

One of these men reproduced the following pledo-e 
as given by Lincoln : ^ 

Whereas, the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage is 
productive of pauperism, degradation, and crime; and 
behevmg it is our duty to discourage that which pro- 
duces more evil than good, we therefore pledge ourselves 
to abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors as a bev- 
erage. 



CHAPTER V 

LINCOLN AND PROHIBITION 

The most distinguishing relation of Abraham Lin- 
coln to the temperance reform was on the side of moral 
suasion, especially as it was exemplified in the Wash- 
ingtonian movement. He had other relations to the 
traffic which he expressed directly and indirectly a 
number of times. 

The liquor advocates have given extensive publicity 
to Lincoln's vote in the Illinois legislature of 1840 on 
"An act to regulate tavern and grocery licenses." In 
the House Journal of December 19, 1840, it is recorded 
that Mr. Murphy, of Chicago, moved to strike out all 
after the enacting clause and to insert the following: 

That after the passage of this act no person shall be 
licensed to sell vinous or spirituous liquors in this State 
and that any person who violates this act by selling such 
liquors shall be fined in the sum of one thousand dol- 
lars, to be recovered before any court having competent 
jurisdiction. 

It was an apparent effort by a friend of the liquor 
business to make the bill an object of ridicule. Lin- 
coln moved to lay the Murphy amendment on the 
table, and this was carried by a vote of seventy-five 

73 



74 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Yeas to eight Nays. This action has been widely 
paraded as evidence that Mr. Lincohi voted against 
prohibition. ; 

In 1855 a prohibitory law was submitted to the 
voters of Illinois and was defeated. Herndon, Lin- 
coln's law partner, was an ardent advocate of pro- 
hibition. Joseph Fort Newton says: 

Lincoln, neither prohibitionist nor abolitionist, held 
aloof, not wishing to divert attention from the supreme 
question of the age, but Herndon plunged into the thick 
of the fight, writing and speaking with all the more zeal 
because liquor was his personal enemy.^ 

^ Mr. Lincoln may have been politically neither pro- 
hibitionist nor abolitionist, but we know that he hated 
slavery, and there is every evidence that he hated also 
the liquor traffic. Just as he became the Great Eman- 
cipator when the right time came, so he would have 
welcomed the day, if it might have come to him, to 
sign a bill forbidding forever the traffic in alcoholic 
liquor. 

Lord Charnwood says: 

His social philosophy, as he expressed it to his friends 
m these days, was one which contemplated great future 
reforms—abolition of slavery and a strict temperance 

J "Lincoln and Herndon," p. '^'j. Dr. Newton adds respecting 
this campaign : 'No offices were at stake, and there was not a 
tiill vote, but the Germans turned out to a man--and it was 
charged, ahiiost to a woman and killed prohibition in Illinois 
tor nearly a generation." Sec also, "Alemoirs of Gustave Koer- 
ner," Vol. I, p. 620. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 75 

policy were among them. But he looked for them in a 
sort of fatalistic confidence in the ultimate victory of 
reason and saw no use and a good deal of harm in pre- 
mature political agitation for them. He is reported to 
have said: "All such questions must find lodgment with 
the most enlightened souls who stamp them with their 
approval. In God's own time they will be organized into 
law and thus woven into the fabric of our institutions." 
This seems a little cold-blooded, but perhaps we can al- 
ready begin to recognize the man who, when the time had 
fully come, would be on the right side, and in whom the 
evil which he had deeply but restrainedly hated would 
find an appallingly wary foe.^ 

There camiot be found in any speech or letter of 
Lincoln's a single word expressing the slightest sym- 
pathy with the licensed traffic in liquor. In his great 
address on Washington's birthday he said : 

Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by 
a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating 
drinks, seems to me not now an open question. Three- 
fourths of mankind confirms the affirmative with their 
tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their 
hearts. 

He also said, speaking of the temperance revolu- 
tion : 

When the victory shall be complete — when there shall 
be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth — how 
proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be 
the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions 

^ Lord Charnwood, "Abraham Lincoln," p. 75. 



76 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly dis- 
tinguished that people who shall have planted and nur- 
tured to maturity both the political and moral freedom 
of their species. 

When Lincoln refers to the ''total and final banish- 
ment of all intoxicating drinks" he is plainly anticipat- 
ing the w^iping-out of the liquor traffic. If all men 
were abstainers there would be nO' reason for the ex- 
istence of the traffic. If no intoxicating liciuor were 
manufactured or sold no one would be induced to form 
the drink habit. 

The friends of the liquor traffic have not only re- 
sorted to misrepresentations in their efforts to identify 
Mr. Lincoln with their business, but have even used 
forgery.**^ In 1887, in Atlanta, Georgia, there was an 
exciting campaign to close the saloons. At that time 
the Neg;roes were voting in Georgia, ' and it was 
shrewdly planned to use the name of Lincoln to cap- 
ture their votes. Handbills were circulated, headed 
in large letters: 

For Liberty ! Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation. 

Underneath this was a picture of a Negro kissing 
the hand of Lincoln, who was in the act of striking 
off his shackles, the Negro's family standing near by.^ 
Under the picture was printed this ostensible quota- 
tion : 

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of tem- 
perance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR ^y 

for it goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it at- 
tempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and in 
making crimes out of things that are not crimes. A pro- 
hibitory law strikes a blow at the very principles on 
which our government was founded. I have always 
been found laboring to protect the weaker classes from 
the stronger, and I can never give my consent to such a 
law as you propose to enact./ Until my tongue be si- 
lenced in death, I will continue to fight for the rights of 
man. 

Then followed this appeal: 

Colored voter, he appeals to you to protect the liberty 
he has bestowed upon you. Will you go back on his ad- 
vice ? Look to your rights ! Read and act ! Vote for 
the sale ! 

A copy of this handbill was sent by the writer of 
these pages to Hay and Nicolay. A reply was re- 
ceived as follows from Hay: 

/ Neither Mr. Nicolay nor I have ever come across this 

// passage in Mr. Lincoln's works, which we have been 
several years compiling. 

Mr. Nicolay, who spent years in gathering Lincoln's 
papers, speeches, and writings of every kind, said: 

In all this vast collection there is nowhere any speech, 
If letter or document, or reported conversation by him on 
the subject of prohibition. 

In spite of these statements, this forged quotation 
continues to be used in wet-and-dry campaigns. A 



^8 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

letter of inquiry as to its origin was sent tO' the Na- 
tional Model License League, of which Colonel T. M. 
Gilmore is president, eliciting this reply : 

As to the reported words of Abraham Lincoln begin- 
ning "Prohibition will work great evil to the cause of 
temperance," I beg leave to say that I can not at this 
time tell you where the original may be found. 

In another letter he admits that after diligent search 
through numerous authorities he could find no evi- 
dence that Lincoln ever used such language.^ 

A prominent liquor journal says : 

It may be impossible to prove conclusively that Lin- 
coln used the exact words in the disputed sentence. ^^ 

In 1853, Rev. James Smith in Springfield gave a lec- 
ture entitled, ''A Discourse on the Bottle; Its Evils 
and the Remedy." On January 29th a request was 
made by those who heard it for the publication of the 
address, because its general circulation would help pub- 
lic sentiment, and Lincoln was one of the signers. 

The wording of this request was : 

The undersigned listened with great satisfaction to the 
discourse, on the subject of temperance, delivered by 
you on last evening, and believing that if published and 
circulated among the people it would be productive of 
good, we respectfully request a copy thereof for pub- 
lication. 

^Letters to David G. Robertson. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 79 

An extract from the address is as follows: 

The liquor traffic is a cancer in society, eating out its 
vitals and threatening destruction ; and all attempts to 
regulate the cancer will not only prove abortive but will 
aggravate the evil. No, there must be no more attempts 
to regulate the cancer ; it must be eradicated ; not a root 
must be left ; for until this is done all classes must con- 
tinue to be exposed to become victims of strong drink, 
and the woe in the text must abide upon us : "Woe unto 
him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putteth the bot- 
tle to him." The most effectual remedy would be the 
passage of a law altogether abolishing the liquor traffic, 
except for mechanical, chemical, medical, and sacramen- 
tal purposes, and so framed that no principle of the con- 
stitution of the States or of the United States be vio- 
lated. 

After Lincoln had attained prominence as a lawyer 
he was in Clinton, attending court, and made a notable 
plea. A grogshop had badly demoralized a number 
of men, and their families had suffered. A company 
of women, anticipating the work of Carrie Nation and 
her hatchet, had made a raid on the infamous place, 
had broken the bottles and demijohns, and smashed 
the whiskey barrels and the furniture. They were 
arrested and prosecuted. It is said that the local at- 
torneys feared the influence of the liquor men, but 
Lincoln volunteered his services in their defense. 

The late Rev. Dr. D. D. Thompson, editor of the 
Northzvestern Christian Advocate, published the fol- 
lowing portion of Lincoln's plea: 



8o LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

May it please the court, I will say a few words in be- 
half of the women who are arraigned before your Honor 
and the jury. I would suggest, first, that there be a 
change in the indictment, so as to have it read, "The 
State against Mr. Whiskey," instead of "The State 
against the Women." It would be far more appropri- 
ate. Touching this question, there are three laws : First, 
the law of self-protection; second, the law of the statute; 
third, the law of God. The law of self-protection is the 
law of necessity, as shown when our fathers threw the 
tea into Boston harbor, and in asserting their right to 
Hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the 
defense of these women. The man who has persisted in 
selling whiskey has had no regard for their well-being or 
for the welfare of their husbands and sons. He has had 
no fear of God nor regard for man ; neither has he had 
any regard for the laws of the statute. No jury can 
fix any damages or punishment for any violation of the 
moral law. The course pursued by this liquor-dealer has 
been for the demoralization of society. His groggery 
has been a nuisance. These women, finding all moral 
suasion of no avail with this fellow, oblivious to all ten- 
der appeals, alike regardless of their prayers and tears, 
in order to protect their households and promote the wel- 
fare of the community, united to suppress the nuisance. 
The good of society demanded its suppression. They 
accomplished what otherwise could not have been done. 

Henry B. Rankin, in referring tO' this case, says: 

In the midst of his powerful appeals to the jury in be- 
half of the women, and his attack upon the evils of the 
traffic and use of intoxicating spirits, the speaker turned, 
and, pointing his long, bony finger toward the venerable 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 8i 

Parson Berry, who was among those present, exclaimed : 
"There stands the man who years ago was instrumental 
in convincing me of the evils of trafficking in and using 
ardent spirits. I am glad I ever saw him. I am glad 
I ever heard and heeded his testimony on this terrible 
subject." * 

Herndon says that at the close of his plea "Lincoln 
gave some of his own observations on the ruinous ef- 
fects of whiskey in society and demanded its early 
suppression." 

At the conclusion of Lincoln's speech, the court, 
without waiting for the verdict of the jury, dismissed 
the women, saying: 

"Ladies, go home. I will require no' bond of you, 
and if any fine is ever wanted of you we will let you 
know." 

According to Herndon, this trial took place in 1855, 
which was the year in which a prohibition law was 
submitted to the voters of Illinois and was defeated.^ 

James B. Merwin, founder of The American Jour- 
nal of Education and widely known as a writer and 
speaker on educational and literary subjects, was also 
among the early advocates of prohibition. He states 
that he and Lincoln campaigned together for prohibi- 
tion in 1854 and 1855. ''^^ that memorable canvass," 
he says : ''Mr. Lincoln and myself spoke in Jackson- 
ville, Bloomington, Decatur, Carlinville, Peoria and 
many other points." Richard Yates, afterwards Gov- 
ernor and United States Senator, presided at the Jack- 

* "Personal Recollections," Henry B. Rankin, p. 80. 
^ Herndon and Weik, Vol. H, p. 12. 



82 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

sonville meeting. In one of the early speeches Lin- 
cohi made, Merwin reports hmi as saying: 

Is not the law of self-protection the first law of nature 
— the first primary law of civilized society ? Law is for 
the protection, conservation and extension of right things 
and of right conduct, not for the protection of evil and 
wrongdoing. 

The State must, in its legislative action, recognize, in 
the law enacted, this principle — it must make sure and 
secure these endeavors to establish, protect, and extend 
right conditions, right conduct, righteousness. 

These conditions will be secured and preserved, not by 
indifference, not by a toleration of evils, not by attempt- 
ing to throw around any evil the shield of law, never by 
any attempt to license the evil. 

This sentiment of right conduct for the protection of 
home, of state, of church, of individuals, must be taken 
up, embodied in legislation, and thus become a positive 
factor active in the State. This is the most important 
function in the legislation of the modern State. 

This saves the whole, and not a part, with a high, true 
conservatism through the united action of all, by all, for 
all. 

The prohibition of the liquor traffic, except for medical 
and mechanical purposes, thus becomes the new evangel 
for the safety and redemption of the people from the 
social, political, and moral curse of the saloon and its 
inevitable evil consequences of drunkenness. 

According to Merwin, Lincoln often said : 
''The saloon and the liquor traffic have defenders, 
but no defense." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 83 

The same authority also gives the following as the 
gist of Lincoln's speeches in the campaign: 

This legalized liquor traffic as carried on in the saloons 
and grogshops is the tragedy of civilization. Good citi- 
zenship demands and requires that what is right should 
not only be made known, but be made prevalent; that 
what is evil should not only be detected and defeated, but 
destroyed. 

The saloon has proved itself to be the greatest foe, the 
most blighting curse of our modern civilization, and this 
is why I am a practical prohibitionist. 

We must not be satisfied until the public sentiment of 
this State and the individual conscience shall be in- 
structed to look upon the saloonkeeper and the liquor- 
seller, with all the license can give him, as simply and 
only a privileged malefactor — a criminal. 

Mr. Merwin is also authority for the statement that 
Lincoln, in advocating the entire prohibition of the 
liquor traffic, used nearly the same language and in 
many instances the same illustrations he used later in 
his arguments against slavery.^ 

" The New Voice, June 16, 1904, 

James B. Merwin became acquainted with Lincoln in 1852. 
In 1855, he took an active part in the "Maine Law Campaign" 
in Illinois, as corresponding secretary of the committee in 
charge, of which Dr. N, S. Davis of Chicago was chairman. At 
the close of the campaign he was presented with a fine gold 
watch with this inscription : 

"Presented by the friends of temperance in Chicago to J. B. 
Merwin, Cor. Sec. of the Maine Law Alliance of the State of 
Illinois, as a token of their confidence and regard for his untir- 
ing energy and perseverance in the campaign of 1855, for Pro- 
hibition." 

Major Merwin said that Lincoln wrote the inscription and 
was a witness of the presentation. 



84 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates Lincoln at one time 
said : 

'*If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." 
The fact that a thing was wrong was sufficient 
reason for Lincoln's opposition, and Mr. Merwin 
points out that in one of his speeches Lincoln said : 

The real issue in this controversy, the one pressing 
upon every mind that gives the subject careful considera- 
tion, is that legalizing the manufacture, sale, and use of 
intoxicating beverage is a wrong — as all history and every 
development of the traffic proves it to be — a moral, so- 
cial, and political wrong. 

Lieutenant Governor Gustave Koerner, one of the 
leading Germans of Illinois, was the leader of the 
forces that defeated prohibition in the campaign of 
1855. He was, however, a devoted friend of Lincoln 

Early in the Civil War Major Merwin worked as a volunteer 
in the camps around Washington, making many addresses to the 
soldiers on questions of morals, and especially on temperance. 
His work had the hearty commendation of the then commander- 
in-chief, General Winfield Scott. On July 24, 1862, President 
Lincoln issued this order: "Surgeon General will send Mr, 
Merwin where he may think the public service will require." 
A number of the army officers, members of Congress and other 
prominent men heartily endorsed Mr. Mcrwin's army work. 
The notes of General Scott and President Lincoln have been 
preserved in facsimile. In the Century Magazine of June, 1917, 
Major Merwin had a Lincoln story, and the following statement 
was published in the editorial notes : 

Major J. B. Merwin, veteran temperance worker, got to know 
Lincoln very well when they were both working in the temper- 
ance cause in Illinois during the years 1854-1855. From 1861 
to 1865 Major Merwin was in Washington nearly all the time, 
engaged in temperance work among the soldiers. 'Tn fact," 
he writes, "when I was in Washington, I slept on the top floor 
of the White House and came to know Lincoln about as well as 
any one could." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 85 

and ardently supported him in his nomination and 
election as President. It may be counted certain that 
if Lincoln had ever uttered any words against prohi- 
bition his friend and admirer would have used them 
in the campaign. 

It is said that some of Mr. Lincoln's political follow- 
ers were alarmed about his radicalism on the prohibi- 
tion question and made an unsuccessful effort to si- 
lence him. 

It is a fact that has escaped mention by the major- 
ity of Lincoln's biographers that the first newspaper 
nomination of Lincoln for President was in a journal 
that was noted as an advocate of temperance reform. 

In a letter written by William O. Stoddard, one of 
Lincoln's secretaries, dated June 30, 19 17, is this 
statement : 

I wrote and printed the first editorial nomination of 
him for President. I sent out 200 extra copies to the 
press and it was widely copied and commented on. The 
Central Illinois Gazette (Champaign, Illinois), of which 
I was part owner and sole editor, was the only out-and- 
out aggressive temperance journal in all that region. We 
were bitterly assailed as "fanatics" but we kept our own 
place "dry." "^ 

The first notice was under the title: "Our Next 
President." It appeared in the Central Illinois Ga- 
zette on May 4, 1859, and is republished by Whitney.^ 

^ Personal letter to the author. 
* "Life of Lincoln," p. 262. 



CHAPTER VI 
Lincoln's great temperance speech 

Abraham Lincoln's name is high in the Hst of the 
great orators of the world. His greatest speeches are 
identified with questions of moral and political reform. 
His plain, vigorous Anglo-Saxon style gave him note 
before his time of wider fame. The ''Gettysburg Ad- 
dress" and the "Second Inaugural Address" are 
counted his masterpieces. His letter to Mrs. Bixby, 
expressing his sympathy to her as the mother of five 
sons who had died as soldiers in the Union Army, is 
hung in a great library at Oxford University as a 
model of English style. 

Mr. Bryce, writing of the florid rhetoric so- common 
in the oratory of Lincoln's time, says that Lincoln 
"escaped it entirely" and that "his example had much 
to do in changing the common practice to a new style 
whose notes were simplicity, directness, and breadth." ^ 

Dr. Newton, discussing the influences upon young 
men in the law office of Lincoln and Herndon, says : 

A new school of eloquence might have formed itself 
by the methods of Lincoln, depending for its results, not 
upon the subtlety of the rhetoric nor the magic of elocu- 

* "Introduction to Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln," 
James Bryce, p. i. 

87 



88 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

tion, but claiming attention and assent by direct and hon- 
est appeals to the common understanding.^ 

Lincoln has so great a reputation as a story-teller 
that many have wondered why so few of his stories 
are to be found in his published addresses. In the 
course of the famous debates with Senator Douglas 
some of his friends did, indeed, urge him to introduce 
more of his witty illustrations and funny stories, and 
so get applause. Lincoln, however, replied : 

''The occasion is too serious. I do' not seek ap- 
plause, or to amuse the people, but to convince them." 

Biographers of Lincoln make special mention of 
three speeches: the one delivered by invitation of the 
Springfield Washingtonian Society, February 22, 
1842; the "House Divided Against Itself," at Spring- 
field, June 17, 1858; and the "Cooper Institute Ad- 
dress," February 27, i860. In connection with all of 
these there is evidence that they were prepared with 
special care and regarded by Lincoln himself as his 
own productions of special value. The two later 
speeches had direct relation to his nomination and 
election as President. 

The Washingtonian movement came to its climax in 
1842, and the 22nd of February of that year was noted 
for the great temperance meetings held in all parts of 
the country. In many cities there were parades with 
music and banners. In Boston, Faneuil Hall was 
filled three times during the day with enthusiastic au- 
diences. 

^ "Lincoln and Herndon," p. 255. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 89 

Dr. John Marsh described the celebration in New 
York in these words: 

The grand festival at Center Market Hall on the birth- 
day of our immortal Washington was got up and carried 
through in a style worthy of the movement with which it 
was connected. The magnitude of the halls, their ap- 
propriate decorations, the immense crowds of people, the 
eloquence of the orators, the beauty and rich supply of 
the table, the hearty congratulations of the guests, the 
pith of the sentiments and the power of the temperance 
odes sung by thousands of voices — these, gratifying as 
they were, did not fill our vision so much as the object 
of the festival and the character and circumstances of the 
many there, once poor, unfortunate drunkards, now dis- 
enthralled, reformed men gathered together with their 
happy families to rejoice in their wonderful deliverance; 
the whole forming an entirely new era in the moral his- 
tory of our great city.^ 

Notable meetings were held in Washington City. 
The Congressional Temperance Society had been or- 
ganized there in 1833, its object as announced being 
''by example and kind moral influence to discounte- 
nance the use of ardent spirits and the traffic in it 
throughout the community." The pledge did not for- 
bid the use of fermented and malt liquors, and it was 
found that this partial pledge did not prevent the fall 
of members of the society. Under the influence of 
the Washingtonian movement the society was reorgan- 
ized in 1842 on the basis of total abstinence from all 
intoxicating liquors. Thomas Marshall, of Ken- 
' "Life of John H. W. Hawkins," p. 187. 



90 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

tucky, a brilliant Congressman, himself a victim of 
drink, began a speech at the time of the reorganiza- 
tion of the society with these words: 

The old Congressional Temperance Society has died of 
intemperance, holding the pledge in one hand and a cham- 
pagne bottle in the other. 

The whole country was so affected by the Washing- 
tonian crusade that many enthusiastic friends of tem- 
perance believed their cause was about to triumph and 
that the liquor traffic was to be annihilated. In this 
year of 1842 the demand for whiskey was reduced 
one-half from that of the previous year, because of 
the reformation of the drinkers. Distilleries ran only 
on half-time. 

Fashionable drinking, too, was becoming unfash- 
ionable. The New York Mercantile Journal made the 
statement : 

At the great and splendid levee given on the occasion 
of his daughter's marriage, the President of the United 
States of America had not a drop of wine or other alco- 
holics furnished. Nothing but cold water was to be had, 
and on a wedding occasion, too. What a noble step! 
One which will draw to him thousands of hearts, warm 
and fresh, and will tell on the future destinies 'of the 
nation. 

Many people thought the movement, founded on 
the law of love, would win the hnal battle against in- 
temperance. At a great convention held in Boston in 
1842, the following resolution was adopted: 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 91 

Resolved, That the unparalleled success of the Wash- 
ingtonian movement in reforming the drunkard and m- 
ducing the retailer to cease his unholy traffic affords con- 
clusive evidence that moral suasion is the true and proper 
basis of action in the temperance cause; and that we, 
therefore, earnestly recommend to its friends not to com- 
promise the high and commanding position it now occu- 
pies. 

On the 22nd of February in the same year, at the 
request of the Springfield Washingtonian Society, 
Lincoln made his great address in the Second Presby- 
terian Church. It has become a classic m temper- 
ance reform. 

Herndon writes: 

Early in 1842 he entered into the Washingtonian 
movement organized to suppress the evils of intem- 
perance At the request of the Society he delivered an 
admirable address on Washington's birthday m the 
Presbyterian Church.^ 

Lamon says: 

For many years Lincoln was an ardent agitator against 
the use of intoxicating beverages and made speeches far 
and near in favor of total abstinence. Some of them 
were printed, and of one of them he was not a little 
proud.^ 

Robert H. Browne says : 

In those years of cheap whiskey, dwarfed lives and 
rum-rotted intellects, he heartily united with a company 

* Herndon and Weik, p. 248. 

** "Life of Lincoln," Lamon, p. 480- 



92 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

of the brave and fearless men and women of the time in 
about the first crusading organization against the drink- 
mg, sure-killing rum habit— the Washingtonians, a fa- 
mous temperance society that saved many a victim and 
accomplished wondrous good in its day. He was an or- 
ganizer, and in visits to different places he organized and 
started several temperance societies.^ 

Mr. Browne also gives extracts from Lincoln's 
noted speech of 1842 as an illustration of his early 
prowess and zeal. 

Dr. Newton says: 

In 1842 Lincoln took part in the Washingtonian tem- 
perance crusade, making several speeches, one of which 
has come down to us. Comparing it with his former ef- 
forts, one discovers a marked advance in restrain of 
style, which became every year less decorative and more 
forthright, simple and thrusting; and the style was the 
man. Rarely has that difficult theme been treated in so 
calm, earnest, and judicious a manner with surer insight 
or a finer spirit. He was already dreaming, it would 
seem, of a time when there should be neither a slave nor 
a drunkard in the republic. But his address, so far from 
'''Abraham Lincoln," Robert H. Browne, Vol. I p 281 
Mr. Browne also said: ^n those days of 'hard cider' and 
many harder and stronger liquors, there was a deal of intem- 
perance everywhere and the country was full of drunkards, 
made so m part perhaps by abundant and low-priced liquor It 

mfd^d^fnV I .'I n T^"^^' "°^ only intoxicating and drove men 
mad drunk but ki led almost as surely as it brutalized the sense 
and soul of its victims. The land was filled with the wrecks 
and remnants of what had been talented, industrious, and prom- 
iv!"r..r^"- :i • • One of the pertinent reasons why Lincoln was 
so httle understood m his day by the men with him and ab^u 
st.7.tlv''.l^'^"''/^*^' flagrant dissipation that was seen con- 
stantly all around him and in which he never participated." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 93 

finding favor, excited hostility, for, speaking out of his 
wide knowledge of men and the wise pity which such 
knowledge begets, he was led to say frankly that those 
who had never fallen into the toils of the vice had es- 
caped more by lack of appetite than by any moral superi- 
ority, and that, taken as a class, drinking men would com- 
pare favorably in head and heart with any other class. 
This was as a red rag to the more intemperate of the 
temperance reformers, to whom drinking was a crime — 
a temper of mind to which Lincoln, as abstemious in habit 
as in speech, was averse. Indeed, his pre-eminent sanity 
in the midst of extremists w^as one of the chief attrac- 
tions of his life.'^ 

In more than one letter Lincoln has referred to this 
address in a way that showed he regarded it as worthy 
of special consideration. To his intimate friend Joshua 
F. Speed he wrote: 

You will see by the last Sangamon Journal that I made 
a temperance speech on the 22nd of February, which I 
claim that Fanny and you shall head as an act of charity 
to me ; for I cannot learn that anybody else has read it or 
is likely to. Fortunately, it is not very long, and I shall 
deem it a sufficient compliance with my request if one 
of you listens while the other reads it.^ 

Major-General George Edward Pickett, one of Gen- 
eral Robert E. Lee's division commanders, and fa- 
mous as the leader of the brilliant but disastrous charge 

^ "Lincoln and Herndon," p. 16. The story was first printed 
in the Sangamon Journal, and has since been reprinted several 
times. 

'"Life of Lincoln," Whitney, "Letters," Vol. Ill, p. 181. 



94 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

at Gettysburg, received his appointment to West Point 
through Lincoln's influence. In a letter written to the 
young cadet Lincoln said : 

I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this 
I nth anniversary of the birth of him whose name, 
mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in 
the cause for moral reformation, we mention in solemn 
awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one victory 
we can ever call complete will be that one which pro- 
claims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the 
face of God's green earth. Recruit for this victory.^ 

In opening his Springfield temperance address Lin- 
coln said that while the temperance cause had been in 
progress for twenty years it was ''just now crowned 
with a degree of success hitherto unparalleled." The 
cause was "transformed from a cold, abstract theory 
to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, 
going forth 'conquering and to concjuer.' " The liquor 
business he called a great adversary, whose citadels 
the chieftain is pictured as storming and dismantling 
and whose idolatrous temples are being deserted. 

The new and splendid success of the Washingtonian 
movement Lincoln ascribed to rational causes, whereas, 
he pointed out, in previous attacks on the demon of 
intemperance the champions had not used the best 
tactics. Most of the champions had been preachers, 
lawyers, and hired agents, and their want of approach- 
ability to the victims of drink had been fatal to suc- 

^ McClurcs Magazine, March, 1908. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 95 

cess. The new champion, he said, had been a victim 
of intemperance — one who 

bursts the fetters that bound him and appears before his 
neighbors "clothed and in his right mind," a redeemed 
specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up with tears 
of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries he 
once endured, now to be endured no more forever ; of 
his once naked and starving children now clad and fed 
comfortably; of a wife, long weighed down with woe, 
weeping, now restored to health, happiness, and renewed 
affection ; and how easily it all is done once it is resolved 
to be done ; however simple his language, there is a logic 
and eloquence in it that few with human feelings can 
resist. 

This is a vivid description of what was constantly 
taking place in the Washingtonian meetings, where 
the principal speakers were the reformed drunkards. 
It may be that sometimes they dwelt too much on their 
previous degradation, with the purpose of making 
their reform the more striking. 

As to the former advocates of liquor, Lincoln said 
that ''too much denunciation against dram-sellers and 
dram-drinkers had been indulged in." He thought 
this impolitic and unjust, because the tendency of hu- 
man nature was ''to meet denunciation with denuncia- 
tion, crimination with crimination, and anathema with 
anathema." In urging the policy of kindly persuasion 
he c|uoted the maxim that "a drop of honey catches 
more flies than a gallon of gall," and he asserted that 
"the kindly method of the Washingtonians to convince 



96 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

and persuade their old companions was proving itself 
the best plan." 

The denunciation method Lincoln pronounced un- 
just, because of the very widespread use of liquor for 
ages. Intoxicating liquor, he said, had, until a decade 
or two ago, been recognized by everybody and repudi- 
ated by nobody. "From the sideboard of the parson 
to the ragged pocket of the homeless loafer it was con- 
stantly found." Physicians even then prescribed it, 
governments provided it for their soldiers and sail- 
ors, and it was thought insufferable not to supply liq- 
uor for all forms of social occasions or public gath- 
erings. It was everywhere a respectable article of 
merchandise, being bought and sold by reputable peo- 
ple like any of the real necessaries of life. While *'it 
was known and acknowledged that many were greatly 
injured by it, none seemed to think that the injury 
arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse 
of a very good thing." 

In this Washingtonian address at Springfield, Lin- 
coln also said that another error of the old reformers 
was to assume that 

all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible and there- 
fore must be turned adrift and damned without rem- 
edy in order that the grace of temperance might abound 
to the temperate then and to all mankind some hundreds 
of years thereafter. 

He challenged this position as "something so re- 
pugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 97 

and feelingless that it never did nor ever can enlist 
the enthusiasm of a popular cause." 

The benefits of this plan of reformation, he con- 
tended, were 

too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its 
behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for 
posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity 
has done nothing for us, and, theorize on it as we may, 
practically we shall do very little for it unless we are 
made to think we are^ at the same time, doing something 
for ourselves. 

He declared that it showed an ignorance of human 
nature 

to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor 
for the temporal happiness of others after themselves 
shall be consigned to the dust. 

Pleasures tO' be enjoyed or pains to be endured, he 
contended, were but little regarded even in our own 
cases and much less in the case of others. In this 
connection he gave the only anecdote in the whole 
speech : 

"Better lay down the spade you're stealing, Paddy, — if 
you don't you will pay for it at the day of judgment." 
"By the powers, if you'll credit me so long, I'll take an- 
other jist." 

The Washingtonians, he said, repudiated the sys- 
tem of consigning the habitual drunkard to hopeless 



98 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

ruin, but labored for their present as well as future 
good. 

They teach hope to all and despair to none. As ap- 
plied to their cause they deny the doctrine of unpardon- 
able sin. As in Christianity it is taught so in this they 
teach that 

"While the lamp holds out to burn 
The vilest sinner may return." 

He contended that these men, even if unlearned, had 
been taught in the school of experience, and he insisted 
that 

Those who have suffered by intemperance personally 
and have reformed are the most powerful and efficient 
instruments to push the reformation to ultimate success. 



He then made an appeal to those who had not suf- 
fered personally from drink — tO' those who' say, 
''What good can I do by signing the pledge? I never 
drink, even without signing." His first appeal was 
that they should sign to give moral support to the man 
struggling with his acquired appetite who needs every 
helpful influence that can be thrown around him. 

He referred to the power of fashion, showing how 
men's actions are influenced by the example of others, 
and urged that it be made unfashionable to withhold 
one's name from the temperance pledge. 

To those who would say, ''By joining a reformed 
drunkards' society we would acknowledge ourselves 
as drunkards" he made this powerful appeal : 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 99 

Surely no Christians will adhere to this objection. If 
they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence con- 
descended to take on Himself the form of sinful men, 
as such to die an ignominious death for their sakes, 
surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely 
lesser condescension for the temporal and perhaps eternal 
salvation of a large, erring and unfortunate class of their 
fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very great. 

Herndon, who attended the meeting, says that this 
statement gave offense to a number of people, some 
even charging Lincoln with infidelity. When he made 
his campaign for Congress against Peter Cartwright 
some portions of this speech were used against him 
to show that he was an unbeliever. 

His slighting allusion, expressed in the address at the 
Presbyterian Church before the Washingtonian Temper- 
ance Society, February 22, four years before, to the in- 
sincerity of Christian people, was not forgotten. ^^ 

Alonzo Rothschild in the discussion of Lincoln's 
campaign for Congress, says: 

The charges of impiety covertly made in former pri- 
mary contests by Lincoln's own Whig associates were 
now publicly urged against him with the greater earnest- 
ness by his Democratic opponents. . . . 

Lincoln's alleged irreligion slyly hinted, a duel that had 
been talked of but had never been fought, and an un- 
popular temperance address recently delivered were 
among the charges used against him.^^ 

^^ Herndon and Weik, Vol. I, p. 259. 
" Rothschild, "Honest Abe," p. 279. 



loo LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

LI. B. Rankin records that Cartwright told him 
years afterward that he and his friends had been mis- 
taken as to these charges. Mr. Rankin also' gives an 
account of a speech that Cartwright made in connec- 
tion with Lincoln's campaign for reelection. It was 
in New York, to a company of prominent New York- 
ers whose consciences, in Cartwright's own w^ords, 
'Svere choked with cotton and cankered with gold." 
The speaker denounced their disloyalty and said: 

I stand here to-night to commend to you the Christian 
character, sterling integrity, and far-seeing capacity of 
the President of the United States, whose official acts 
you have in your blind money-madness so critically as- 
sailed to-night. ^2 

Lincoln frecjuently cpioted Scripture in his speeches. 
In the Springfield temperance address there are at least 
eight cjuotations or direct references to the Bible. 

Referring to the prevalent idea that drunkards were 
inferior types, he said: 

If we take habitual drunkards as a class their heads 
and hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with 
those of any other class. 

And he adds: 

What one of us but can call to mind some dear rela- 
tive, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who 
has fallen a sacrifice to the rapacity of the demon of in- 
temperance ? 

" H. B. Rankin, "Personal Recollections," p. 274. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR loi 

Lincoln was evidently much moved by the powerful 
results of the Washingtonian reform. *'If the rela- 
tive grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the 
great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the 
small amount they inflict, then indeed will this be the 
grandest the world shall ever have seen." He com- 
pared the movement with the political revolution of 
1776, which had brought so much political freedom, 
and in which the world had "found a solution of that 
long-mooted problem as to the capability of man to 
govern himself." While that was glorious, there were 
mixed with it evils of war, famine, "the orphan's cry, 
the widow's wail," as part of the price paid for its 
blessings. "Turn now to the temperance revolution. 
In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler 
slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed. In it 
more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sor- 
row assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows 
weeping." He also called the temperance reformation 
a noble ally to the cause of political freedom. He saw, 
too, with prophetic eye, the future that seems now to 
be dawning: 

Even the dram-maker and the dram-seller will have 
glided into other occupations so gradually as never to 
have felt the shock of change, and will stand ready to 
join all others in the universal song of gladness. 

When we remember that this speech was made more 
than three-quarters of a century ago, its breadth of 
vision, its sane and powerful arguments, and its con- 
fident faith in the coming triumph of the cause he ad- 



102 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

vocated make it one of the most remarkable of tem- 
perance pleas and a permanent document of priceless 
value. We do well to-day to mark its expression of 
the true Lincolnian spirit : 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PRESIDENTS AND LIQUOR 

There is no higher office than that of President of 
the United States. It is but natural that men should 
wish to use the luster and dignity attaching to that high 
office to advance a cause, and that the indorsement by 
the President of any movement should be counted of 
great value. 

For nearly a century friends of temperance reforms 
have sought to identify with this cause our chief mag- 
istrates. 

Edward C. Delavan in 1834 caused tO' be drawn up 
a statement that has become known as the "Presidents' 
Declaration," which reads as follows: 

Being satisfied from observation and experience as well 
as from medical authority that ardent spirit as a drink 
is not only needless but hurtful, and that the entire dis- 
use of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, 
and the happiness of the community, we hereby express 
our conviction that, should the citizens of the United 
States, and especially the young men, discontinue entirely 
the use of it, they would not only promote their own 
personal benefit, but the good of our country and the 
world. 

103 



I04 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

To this declaration were signed the names of Presi- 
dents Jackson, Madison, John Quincy Adams, Van 
Buren, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and 
Lincoln. 

In a debate on Prohibition in the National Congress 
in 1914 a member declared: 

'Washington was a distiller, Jefferson was a brewer, 
Lincoln was a saloonkeeper." 

George Washington was, indeed, an extensive 
farmer, and as siich he could with equal propriety be 
called a miller, a manufacturer, a pork-packer, or a 
stockman,^ as well as a distiller; for he had dealings in 
all these lines of trade. In his time almost every large 
farm^ in the country where grain or fruit was raised 
had its own still. There were reported 15,000 dis- 
tilleries at that period. Washington had a number of 
plantations under the supervision of overseers, and 
each of these was expected to show the largest pos- 
sible profits. Liquor made in the distillery on one of 
his plantations may have been sold just as meat and 
vegetables and even slaves were sold.^ 

In the days of Washington drink was a source of 
much trouble. In making a contract with an overseer 
he added the clause : 

And whereas there are a number of whiskey stills very 
contiguous to the said plantation and many idle, 
drunken, and dissolute people continually resorting to 
the same, priding themselves in debauching sober and 
well-inclined persons, the said Ed Violet doth promise 

'Ford, "The True George Washington." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 105 

for his own sake and his employer's to avoid them as he 
ought. 

Washington also wrote about a man he employed to 
take charge of his Negro carpenters: 

I am apprehensive that Green will never overcome his 
propensity to drink; that it is this which occasions his 
frequent sickness, his absences from work, and his pov- 
erty. 

One of the first orders General Washington issued 
when he took command of the Continental troops at 
Cambridge, March 25, 1776, contained this clause: 

All officers of the Continental Army are enjoined to 
assist the civil magistrates in the execution of their duty 
and to promote peace and good order. They are to pre- 
vent, as much as possible, the soldiers from frequenting 
tippling-houses. 

On May 26, 1778, Washington ordered a detail of 
a corporal and eight men with the commissary of each 
brigade, who were directed to confiscate liquors found 
in the vicinity of the camp, and also to notify the 
neighboring inhabitants "that an unconditional seiz- 
ure will be made of all liquors they shall presume 
to sell in the future." He also issued this order : 

All persons whatever are forbid selling liquor to the 
Indians. If any settler or soldier shall presume to act 
contrary to this prohibition, the former shall be dismissed 
from the camp and the latter receive severe corporal pun- 
ishment. 



io6 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Thomas Jefferson was also an extensive farmer, and 
his home at MonticellO' was described as a principal- 
ity of two hundred inhabitants. There were shops 
for shoemaking, tailoring, and weaving, and a mill for 
the accommodation of neighbors. 

Jefferson, in a discussion of the work of the farmers, 
replying to the question, *'What can we raise for the 
market?" said: 

''Some say whiskey, but all mankind must become 
drunkards to consume it." ^ 

As to the charge that Jefferson was a brewer, the 
only record is that he was so impressed with the evils 
of liquor-drinking that he wrote a letter favoring the 
manufacture of beer as a substitute for the more fiery 
distilled spirits, in which letter he said : 

I wish to see this beverage common instead of whis- 
key, which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their 
families. 

During the period of the first widespread popular 
movement for temperance, — the Washingtonian, — 
there was so anti-alcoholic a sentiment that President 

^ "The Cyclopedia of Temperance, Prohibition and Public 
Morals," p. 156. 

W. P. T. Fergison writes : "There is no doubt that there was 
a certain toleration of the drink business among the Revolu- 
tionary fathers. This was particularly true as regards the manu- 
facture of beer. The beer business was something very differ- 
ent from what it is now. There were no great brewing com- 
panies with millions of dollars of capital, corrupting politicians, 
intimidating city and state governments, controlling vice sys- 
tems, and exploiting the working masses. It took almost one 
hundred years for the brewing business to develop to what it is 
to-day, and for its evils to begin to be recognized." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 107 

Polk opened the White House without wine upon his 
table. 

About this time the venerable ex-President, John 
Ouincy Adams, in an address, said : 

I regard the temperance movement of the present day 
as one of the most remarkable phenomena of the human 
race, operating simultaneously in every part of the world 
for the reformation of a vice often solitary in itself, but 
as infectious in its nature as the smallpox or the plague, 
and combining all the ills of war, pestilence, and famine. 
Among those who have fallen by intemperance are in- 
cluded untold numbers who were respected for their tal- 
ents and worth and exalted among their neighbors and 
countrymen.^ 

President Andrew Jackson authorized the abolish- 
ment of the spirit ration in the army. He declared 
that it had been shown by medical reports that ''the 
habitual use of ardent spirits by the troops has a per- 
nicious effect upon their health, morals, and disci- 
pline," and he ordered that "commissaries cease to is- 
sue ardent spirits as a part of the daily ration of the 
soldier." ^ 

One of the most interesting chapters in the history 
of the White House, especially as concerning the liq- 
uor question, is the story of Mrs. Lucy Webb Hayes, 
wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Mrs. liayes 
was the first mistress of the Executive Mansion who 
banished intoxicating lic_[uor from social functions. 

^ Wooley and Johnson, "Temperance Progress," p. 482. 
* Ibid., p. 411. 



io8 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

President and Mrs. Hayes were both total abstainers, 
and there was much curiosity as to what would be 
their attitude in the matter of serving liquors at offi- 
cial entertainments. When the Russian grand dukes 
Alexis and Constantine were guests at a White House 
dinner Secretary of State Evarts insisted that they 
were accustomed tO' wine at their meals and that it 
would be discourteous to Russia not to serve wine. 
Evarts' plea prevailed, — but only on this one occasion. 
It was the first and last time that intoxicants were 
served while Mrs. Hayes was in the White House. 

There was bitter opposition and malignant criticism, 
of course, at the exclusion of liquor from ceremonial 
dinners. When Secretary Evarts argued the ques- 
tion with Mrs. Hayes and said it was an insult to for- 
eign nations not to furnish wine, she replied : 

"1 have young sons who have never tasted liquor. 
They shall not receive from my hand, nor with the 
sanction that its use in our family would give, their 
first taste of what might prove their ruin. What I 
wish for my own sons I must do for the sons of other 
mothers." 

There were many delightful social receptions dur- 
ing the Hayes administration, and it was proved that 
there could be the most genial and hospitable entertain- 
ments without serving intoxicating liquors. 

Former Ambassador Bryce says that while Wash- 
ington "has become one of the handsomest capitals in 
the world," no President has attempted to create a 
court. ''As the earlier career of the chief magistrate 
and his wife has seldom qualified them to lead the 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 109 

world of fashion none is likely to make it." He adds, 
however : 

The action of the wife of President Hayes, an es- 
timable and energetic lady whose ardent advocacy of tem- 
perance caused the formation of a great many total ab- 
stinence societies, called by her name (Lucy Webb), 
showed that there may be fields in which a President's 
consort can turn her exalted position to good account, 
while of course such graces or charms as she possesses 
will tend to increase his popularity. "^ 

President Hayes, on the recommendation of Gen- 
eral Miles, issued an executive order on February 22, 
1 88 1, as follows: 

In view of the well-known fact that the sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors in the army of the United States is the 
cause of much demoralization among both officers and 
men, and that it gives rise to a large proportion of the 
cases before the general and garrison courts-martial, in- 
volving great expense and serious injury to the service, 
... it is therefore directed that the Secretary of War 
take suitable steps, as far as practically consistent with 
vested rights, to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors 
as a beverage at the camps, forts, and other posts of the 
army.^ 

In 1899 Secretary of the Navy John D. Long issued 
an order forbidding the sale or issuing ''of any malt 
or other alcoholic liquor to enlisted men, either on 
shipboard or in naval stations." '^ 

^ Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," YoL I, p. 71. 
® "Temperance Progress," p. 415. 
'' Ibid.j p. 421. 



no LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Secretary of the Navy Daniels has added to this or- 
der the exckision of all intoxicants from officers' 
messes, making the Navy ''bone-dry." Mr. Daniels' 
order followed this expression from Surgeon-General 
of the Navy Braisted: 

It may be stated as a fact that, except as a temporary 
expedient in certain cases of illness, the use of alcohol 
is harmful and its abuse disastrous alike to the individual 
and to the human race. Its use in the service is based 
upon worn-out customs, and there is no authority by law 
or otherwise for its continuance except as contained in 
the Naval instructions. 

Mr. Daniels' dry order as to the Navy has been bit- 
terly opposed by the liquor interests, but has been 
strongly indorsed by high officers in our own Navy, 
and also' by officials of other nations. Much of the 
malignant opposition to Secretary Daniels is explained 
by the brutal efforts of the liquor interests angered by 
his naval wine mess order. 

Admiral Dewey shortly before his death said: 

I have been in the Navy sixty-two years and have 
served under many Secretaries of the Navy, but Secre- 
tary Daniels is the best Secretary we ever had and has 
done more for the Navy than any other. I am amazed 
by his knowledge of technical matters. He has studied 
profoundly, and his opinion is founded on close ob- 
servation.^ 

^ Letter from Mrs. Dewey to Senator Overman, "Cyclopedia of 
Temperance," p. 289. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR iii 

- The army canteen, as many will remember, had in 
recent times become practically a liquor saloon in 
which army officers were the barkeepers. In 1901, 
however, Congress by a large majority passed the fol- 
lowing law : 

The sale or dealing in beer, wine, or any intoxicating 
liquors, by any person, in any port exchange or canteen 
or army transport, or upon any premises used for mili- 
tary purposes by the United States, is hereby prohibited. 
The Secretary of War is hereby directed to carry the 
provisions of this section into full force and effect. 

What is known as the Webb-Kenyon law, prohibit- 
ing the shipping of intoxicating liquors into any State 
when they are intended tO' be used in violation of State 
laws, was vetoed by President Taft in 19 13. The 
Senate, however, overrode the President's veto by a 
vote of 63 to 21 and the House of Representatives by 
a vote of 244 to 95.^ 

One of the great shames of Christendom is the traf- 
fic in intoxicating liquors with the uncivilized nations. 
Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts says of this: 

The liquor traffic among child races, even more mani- 
festly than in civilized lands, injures all other trades by 

® The United States Supreme Court, January 8, 1917, sus- 
tained the Webb-Kenyon law. The decision, read by Chief Jus- 
tice White, contained the following : 

"The all reaching power over liquor is settled. There was no 
intention of Congress to forbid individual use of liquor. The 
purpose of this act was to cut out by the roots the practice of 
permitting violation of State liquor laws. We can have no 
doubt that Congress has complete authority to prevent para- 
lyzing of State authority. Congress exerted a power to co- 
ordinate the national with the State authority." 



112 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

producing poverty, disease, and death. Livingstone 
said: "All I can say in my solitude is. May Heaven's 
richest blessing come upon every one, English, Amer- 
ican, or Turk, who shall help to heal this open sore of the 
world." The United States government has long pro- 
hibited the sale of liquor to our Indians. Christian mis- 
sionaries have been the leaders in the efforts to suppress 
the rum traffic, and we have said : "The vile rum in this 
tropical climate is depopulating the country more rapidly 
than famine, pestilence, and war." ^° 

The efforts to suppress what has been styled ''the 
burning curse of Africa" have had the sanction of 
several of our chief executives. President Benjamin 
Harrison said : 

The men who have gone to heathen lands with the mes- 
sage, "We seek not yours, but you," have been hindered 
by those who, coming after, have reversed the message. 
Rum and other corrupting agencies come in with our 
boasted civilization, and the feeble nations wither before 
the white man's vices. 

President Cleveland said: 

It being the plain duty of this government to aid in 
suppressing the nefarious traffic, impairing as it does the 
praiseworthy and civilizing efforts now in progress in that 
region, I recommend that an act be passed prohibiting 
the sale of arms and intoxicants to natives in the regu- 
lated zone by our citizens. 

" Dr. and Mrs. Wilbur F. Crafts, "Intoxicating Drinks and 
Drugs in all Lands and Times." 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 113 

President McKinley, discussing the need of regu- 
lating the Hquor traffic in Africa, said: 

The principle involved has the cordial sympathy of 
this government, which in the revisionary negotiations 
advocated more drastic measures, and I would gladly 
see its extension by international agreement to the re- 
striction of the liquor traffic with all uncivilized peoples. 

President Roosevelt said : 

In dealing with the aboriginal races few things are 
more important than to preserve them from the terrific 
physical and moral degradation resulting from the liquor 
trafiic. We are doing all we can to save our own In- 
dian tribes from this evil. Whenever by international 
agreement this same end can be attained as regards 
races where we do not possess exclusive control, every 
effort should be made to bring it about. 

At this time a common statement in newspapers an- 
nouncing the departure of a ship from Boston for 
Africa had been: ''There were five missionaries in 
the cabin, and five hundred barrels of rum in the hold." 
In treaties of 1890, 1899, ^^^ 1906, however, accord- 
ing to Dr. Crafts, seventeen nations, Christian and 
Mohammedan, agreed to protect the natives of those 
portions of Africa not previously protected by Mo- 
hammedan laws in the north and by British laws in 
the south against the white man's "firewater." ^^ 

William O. Stoddard, who has been referred to in 

"All the foregoing quotations on the subject of the African 
liquor traffic are taken from the book by Dr. and Mrs. Crafts. 



114 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

preceding pages, had during his three and a half years 
in the White House exclusive charge of the cor- 
respondence of both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. On ac- 
count of his duties in the social affairs of the Execu- 
tive Mansion he was known as "Mrs. Lincoln's Sec- 
retary." Touching the attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Lin- 
coln as to liquor during their incumbency of the 
White House, Mr. Stoddard has this to say in a per- 
sonal letter: 

The temperance atmosphere of the house may be well 
illustrated by an occurrence in the fall of 1861. Some 
gentlemen in New York, patriotic and kindly and mind- 
ful of the hospitality requirements of the President's 
mansion, sent on a fine collection of assorted and choice 
and fascinating wines and liquors. They were duly de- 
livered, but Mrs. Lincoln at once sent for me in a state 
of consternation: "O Mr. Stoddard, what shall I do? 
Mr. Lincoln never touches any, I never do. He won't 
have a drop of it in the house." I really had to laugh 
at the good lady's perplexity, but could help her out. She 
was much interested in some of the military hospitals, 
visiting them. So I told her to acknowledge the gift to 
the kind givers with all courtesy and to send the entire 
consignment to the medical directors of her pet hos- 
pitals for what good it might do to them or to the pa- 
tients. So it all went.^^ 

As President, Lincoln approved of laws and meas- 
ures limiting and prohibiting the sale or giving of 
liquor to soldiers. In 1861 Generals Butler, Mc- 
Clellan, and Banks issued orders excluding all liquors 
" Personal letter from Mr. Stoddard. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 115 

from their commands. On August 5, 1861, the Presi- 
dent signed an act of Congress providing 

That it shall not be lawful for any person in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia to sell, give or administer to any sol- 
dier or volunteer in the service of the United States, or 
any person wearing the uniform of such soldier or vol- 
unteer, any spirituous liquor or intoxicating drink; and 
such person offending against the provisions of this act 
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon con- 
viction thereof, before a magistrate or court having 
criminal jurisdiction, shall be punished by a fine of 
$25.00 or imprisonment for thirty days.^^ 

On March 19, 1862, Lincoln signed an act of Con- 
gress making the Inspectors-General of the Army a 
board of officers with authority to prepare a list of 
articles that might be sold to the officers and soldiers 
in the volunteer service — with this limitation : *Tro- 
vided always that no intoxicating liquors shall at any 
time be contained therein or the sale of such liquors 
be in any way authorized by said board." ^* 

The advocates of the suppression of liquor in the 
navy were backed by the influence of Admiral Foote 
and Captains Dupont, Hudson, and Stringham, and 
on July 14, 1862, President Lincoln signed a law pro- 
hibiting the use of liquors for beverage purposes in 
the Navy, which contained the following provision : 

And be it further enacted. That from and after the 
first day of September, 1862, the spirit ration of the navy 

" U. S. Statutes at Large, Vol. XII, C. 44. 
'*Ibid., Vol. XII, C. 47- 



ii6 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

no distilled spirituous liquors shall be admitted on board 
of vessels of war except as medical stores, and upon 
the order and under the control of the medical officers of 
such vessels, and to be used only for medical purposes. 
From and after the said first day of September next 
there shall be allowed and paid to each person in the 
army now entitled to the spirit ration five cents per day 
in commutation and lieu thereof, which shall be in ad- 
dition to their present pay/^ 

On September 29, 1863, a deputation from the 
Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia called upon President Lincoln and 
urged further methods of suppression of the evils of 
intemperance in the army. In his response the Presi- 
dent said : 

As a matter of course it will not be possible for me 
to make a response coextensive with the address which 
you have presented to me. If I were better known than 
I am, you would not need to be told that in the advocacy 
of the cause of temperance you have a friend and sym- 
pathizer in me. When I was a young man — long ago, 
before the Sons of Temperance as an organization had 
an existence — I in an humble way made temperance 
speeches, and I think I may say that to this day I have 
never by my example belied what I then said. In regard 
to the suggestions which you make for the purpose of the 
advancement of the cause of temperance in the army, I 
cannot make particular responses to them at this time. 
To prevent intemperance in the army is even a part of 
the articles of war. It is a part of the law of the land, 

''U. S. Statutes at Large, Vol. XII, C. 164. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 117 

and was so, I presume, long ago, to dismiss officers for 
drunkenness. I am not sure that, consistently with the 
public service, more can be done than has been done. 
All, therefore, that I can promise you is, if you will be 
pleased to furnish me with a copy of your address, to 
have it submitted to the proper department and have it 
considered whether it contains any suggestions which 
will improve the cause of temperance and repress the 
cause of drunkenness in the army any better than it is 
already done. I can promise no more than that. I 
think that the reasonable men of the world have long 
since agreed that intemperance is one of the greatest if 
not the very greatest of all evils amongst mankind. 
That is not a matter of dispute, I believe. That the dis- 
ease exists, and that it is a very great one, is agreed 
upon by all.^® 

Perhaps the most serious mistake in the wonderful 
political career of Abraham Lincoln v^as that he signed 
the Internal Revenue Bill, which, by laying a tax on 
liquors, did it in such a way that the business of 
making and selling liquors was put under the protec- 
tion of the national government. 

The story of the passage of the bill and Lincoln's 
approval is of great interest. It was in the second 
year of the great war, and the expenditures of the gov- 
ernment were enormous in comparison with any pre- 
vious experience of the Republic. It was also- a crit- 
ical time in military affairs. The Union armies had 
met with some serious defeats. The soldiers were 
unpaid. The proposed Revenue Bill exacted heavy 

"Official Report of Sons of Temperance, 1864. 



ii8 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

taxes on everything upon which such burdens could be 
laid. The proposal to exact large taxes from the mak- 
ers and sellers of liquor provoked bitter debates in 
both houses of Congress. Among the leaders of both 
houses were sincere champions of prohibition, who 
were divided on the bill. 

Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, made se- 
rious objection to the bill because it was a form of 
licensing the liquor traffic. He said : 

'T look upon the liquor trade as grossly immoral, 
carrying more evil than anything else in this coun- 
try, and I think the Federal government ought not to 
derive a revenue from the retailing of intoxicating 
drinks." 

He had the foresight to prophesy that it would give 
the business of liquor-selling a respectable position. 

^Tt will be hailed," he said, "from one end of the 
country to the other by the whole rum-selling interests 
of the country. ... It will give immense power and 
strength to the liquor-selling interests." 

Senator Grimes of Iowa and Senator Pomeroy of 
Kansas stood with Senator Wilson. On the other 
hand, Senator Fessenden of Maine, one of the strong- 
est champions of prohibition, took the ground that the 
license of the revenue bill was only nominal, that it 
was really a tax, and did not authorize any sale of liq- 
uor contrary to State law. 

The measure was introduced into the House of Rep- 
resentatives by Anson P. Morrill, also of Maine, an- 
other champion of prohibition. He favored the bill be- 
cause it imposed a burden on the liquor traffic, saying : 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 119 

"If you make this tax so high as to prohibit the 
traffic, which it does not propose to do, you can do no 
more vakiable service to your country." 

He declared he would favor a tax so high that it 
would wipe out the business, and also' that if the sale 
of intoxicating liquors could be stopped ''the country 
would suffer less by the war than it has and does from 
the use of intoxicating liquors." 

Senator Wilson, while strongly opposed to the li- 
cense idea, stated that he would favor a tax, and 
added : 

''I would like to put enough tax on it to prohibit the 
manufacture of a single gallon of liquor in the whole 
country. If I had the power to do that and could do 
it, I should think that I was a public benefactor." 

While the friends of prohibition were divided on 
the support of the Revenue Law, Secretary of the 
Treasury Chase pressed Mr. Lincoln in behalf of the 
empty treasury and made the plea that the soldiers 
and sailors and their families were in great need, and 
that money must be furnished. The Secretary and 
many friends of prohibition treated it as an emergency 
measure that would be revoked as soon as the war was 
over.^''^ 

The testimony of Major Merwin is of interest and 
value. In a private letter he says: 

There were tens of thousands of soldiers, faithful, self- 
denying, patriotic and true, who had not been paid for 

" Congressional Record, May, 1862. 



I20 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

months. Secretary Chase, a most accompHshed and suc- 
cessful financier, had exhausted every resource of the 
country. The famihes of soldiers, to my certain knowl- 
edge, were without food, and some of them without 
shelter. Napoleon said, ''Make the vices pay the bills," 
and so they came to President Lincoln and pleaded with 
him to recoup the empty treasury by taxing liquors. He 
revolted at once. "Never," said he, "will I consent to 
that infamy." Lincoln, great as he was and good as he 
was, was not so great as his party. He had to yield to 
the pressure — to my certain knowledge with the specific 
agreement that it was only and distinctly "a war meas- 
ure," to be repealed as soon as the war was over. I 
know positively how the great Lincoln struggled days 
over this matter, but a person not conversant with ex- 
isting conditions can form no idea of the pressure.^^ 

In another letter Major Merwin writes: 

Mr. Chase sent for me for two consultations on the 
matter, he was so much afraid I should advise against 
it. I told Mr. Lincoln, 'T dare not advise you one way 
or another. I know the pressure for money to pay the 
troops. Please always stand on the positive agreement 
that it ' is to end with the war." From my personal 
knowledge that consent was obtained for his signature to 
the bill. 

At the Anti-Saloon League convention in Colum- 
bus, Ohio, a few years ago Major Merwin gave sim- 
ilar testimony. He declared that in the presence of 
Senator Wilson, Secretary Chase, and himself, Mr. 
Chase said: 

"* Personal letter. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 121 

''Mr. Lincoln, we have got to have the resources of 
evil as well as good to end this rebellion, and we must 
have the resources. Mr. Lincoln, we cannot stand it 
any longer." 

Then Lincoln said : 

''I had rather lose my right hand than to sign a 
document that shall perpetuate the liquor traffic, but 
as soon as the exigencies pass away I will turn my 
attention to the repeal of that document." 

If Lincoln had survived the war, there can be no 
question as to his seeking the repeal of a law that was 
so shrewdly manipulated by the liquor interests as to 
give an air of respectability to their business and so 
hitrench it in law and add to their enormous financial 

gains. 

It may be well to recall the fact that for nearly hfty 
years before the war there was no Federal tax on the 
liquor traffic. There were customs duties on imported 
liquors. While at this time there were no financial 
burdens put upon the liquor business, it was the period 
of the inauguration of the modern temperance reform. 
During that period there had arisen the American 
Temperance Society, the American Temperance Un- 
ion, the Washingtonian and Father Mathew total ab- 
stinence crusades, and the beginnings of the fraternal 
temperance societies of which the Sons of Temperance 
was the pioneer. By the close of 1855 fourteen States 
were under prohibitory laws. Agitations for both 
abolition and temperance were before the country ; but 
eventually the slavery question took the leading place 
until that issue was settled by the war. After the war 



122 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

the liquor-makers, who for a time opposed the tax, 
found that the paying of so large a share of the ex- 
penses of the government by the revenue gave them 
place and power and made friends for them among 
many people who were not unwilling to evade taxes 
even at the shameful cost of partnership with a busi- 
ness so destructive and dangerous. 

On the last day of Lincoln's life Major Merwin 
was a guest at the White House. He was to go as a 
special messenger from the President tO' Llorace 
Greeley and others, to enlist their influence in forward- 
ing a plan to employ colored troops in the construc- 
tion of the Panama Canal. ^^ After Lincoln had given 
to the Major the papers and the necessary instructions 
he said : 

"Merwin, we have cleared up a colossal job. Slav- 
ery is abolished. After reconstruction the next great 
question will be the overthrow and suppression of the 
legalized liquor traffic, and you know that my head 
and my heart, my hand and my purse will go into the 
contest for victory. In 1842, less than a. quarter of a 
century ago, I predicted that the day would come when 
there would be neither a slave nor a drunkard in the 
land. I have lived to see one prediction fulfilled. I 
hope to live to see the other." 

^^ Major Merwin was on many occasions President Lincoln's 
personal guest at the White House, being associated with him 
in an unofficial and confidential capacity, to carry out important 
commissions. Such personal representatives are common with 
our Presidents. As an illustration : the relation of Colonel 
House to President Wilson. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 123 

Major Merwin thus concludes the story of this in- 
terview : 

We shook hands and I left for Philadelphia and New 
York. That night the bullet of the assassin sent him into 
eternal silence. 

Lincoln's fame shines brightest as the Great Eman- 
cipator. The names of the other noted advocates of 
immediate abolition do not maintain a rank so high 
as that of the man who put his name to the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation. So to-day, in reviewing the rec- 
ord of the war against liquor, from the obscurity of 
pioneer life, from the rudeness and drunkenness of 
the pioneer days, and through the progress of the re- 
form to the time of its latest development, the name 
of Lincoln shines out as one of the most potent in- 
fluences. His whole career, from the Kentucky log 
cabin to the White House, gives him a foremost place 
in this great moral movement for human welfare. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LINCOLN : America's great-heart 

Nicolay and Hay thus sum up the quaHties that 
give Lincohi his place as one of the leaders of man- 
kind : 

To qualifications of high literary excellence and easy 
practical mastery of affairs of transcendent importance, 
we must add as an explanation of his immediate and 
world-wide fame his possession of certain moral quali- 
ties rarely combined in such high degree in one indi- 
vidual. His heart was so tender that he would dis- 
mount from his horse in a forest to replace in their nest 
young birds which had fallen by the roadside ; he could 
not sleep at night if he knew a soldier boy was under 
sentence of death ; he could not even at the bidding of 
duty or policy, refuse the prayer of age or helplessness 
in distress. Children instinctively loved him ; they never 
found his rugged features ugly. His sympathies were 
quick and seemingly unlimited. . . . 

To a hope which saw the Delectable Mountains of 
absolute justice and peace in the future, to a faith that 
God in his own time would give to all men the things 
convenient to them, he added a charity which embraced 
in its deep bosom all the good and the bad, all the vir- 
tues and the infirmities of men, and a patience like that 

125 



126 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

of nature, which in its vast and fruitful activities knows 
neither haste nor rest.^ 

Some years ago the present writer heard that Theo- 
dore Roosevelt had said he thought Abraham Lincoln 
was America's Great-Heart. A note of inquiry 
brought the following response from the White 
House, under date of November 30, 1908: 

My dear Dr. Milner : 

Yes, you are entirely right. But I had no idea that 
what I said was being reported. Great-Heart is my fa- 
vorite character in allegory (which is, of course, a 
branch of fiction, as you say), just as Bunyan's *Til- 
grim's Progress" is to my mind one of the greatest books 
that was ever written ; and I think that Abraham Lincoln 
is the ideal Great-Heart of Public life. 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Great-Heart, it will be remembered, is the guide for 
Christiana and her children in the second part of Bun- 
yan's ''Pilgrim's Progress." He is the brave but tender 
guide who leads the mother and children through many 
troubles, trials, and sorrows to the Eternal City. He 
fights battles with and triumphs over Giants Grim, 
Bloody War, Maul, Slay-Good, and Despair. He 
fights and conquers Apollyon. He leads those under 
his care safely through the Valley of Humiliation, to 
the borders of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
And after many battles they cross the Enchanted 

* Nicolay and Hay, "Abraham Lincoln — A History," Vol. X, 
P- 354. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 127 

Ground to the land of Beailah, and then enter the 
Celestial City. 

When we remember Lincoln's great-hearted sym- 
pathy with humanity; his gentle, beautiful character; 
his love for mankind, and his horror at injustice and 
cruelty, the title of Great-Heart is most fitting. 

Lincoln had a horror of human slavery. In a let- 
ter to his friend Joshua F. Speed he tells of seeing on 
the boat from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio ten 
or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons, and 
he says : 

That sight was a continual torment to me, and I see 
something like it every time I touch Ohio or any other 
slave border. ... I confess I hate to see the poor crea- 
tures hunted down and caught and carried back to their 
stripes and unrequited toil ; but I bite my lips and keep 
quiet." 

James Russell Lowell wrote of him: 

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God and true, 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind, indeed, 
Who loved his charge but never loved to lead — 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be.^ 

Wq know how his great heart was moved by the suf- 
fering caused by the war, and his sympathy for the 
soldiers was so great that the stern Secretary of War, 
Stanton, charged him with weakening discipline by 
his refusal to allow soldiers to be shot for breaches of 
military regulations. 

^Whitney, "Life and Letters," Vol. Ill, p. 190. 
^ Lowell, "Commemoration Ode." 



128 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

What other ruler of a great nation ever gave hours 
of labor to details of cases of humble men under sen- 
tence, in order to find excuse for their pardon? He 
had a standing order that persons making application 
for pardon should be admitted at once to him. He 
agonized in spirit over men condemned to death and 
in scores of cases sent the despatch, ''Suspend execu- 
tion until further orders." And the ''further orders" 
were never given. 

When sharply criticised for his pardon of soldiers, 
he said : 

"I am sick of this butchery business." 

After sending a pardon to a young soldier con- 
demned for sleeping on his post, he said : 

"I can not think of going into eternity with the 
blood of that young man on my skirts." 

When the war ended, Lincoln had no thought of re- 
venge, but only of how he could best heal the scars of 
war. When it was proposed to starve Confederate 
soldiers because Union soldiers were being starved in 
Southern prisons, his reply was: 

"Whatever others may say or do, I never can and 
never will be accessory to such treatment of human 
beings." 

When he was urged to retaliate for the massacre of 
Negro soldiers at Fort Pillow he said he could not take 
men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done 
by others, and he added : 

"Once begun, I do not know where such a measure 
would stop." 

When victory came to the Union cause, he said: 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 129 

"We must not sully victory with harshness." "^ 

After Appomattox some prominent persons insisted 
that the leaders of the Rebellion should be dealt with 
severely, and demanded nothing less than their exe- 
cution. The Great-Heart opened his Bible to Sam- 
uel II, and read the story of Shimei, who cursed and 
stoned David as he fled from Jerusalem at the rebellion 
of Absalom. After David v/as restored to power, 
Shimei sought a pardon. Abishai, nephew of the 
king, said he should be put to death because he had 
"cursed the Lord's anointed." Lincoln used the words 
of David : 

''What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, 
that ye should this day be adversaries unto me ? Shall 
there any man be put to death this day?" 

Lincoln had great sympathy with soldiers and the 
families of those who gave up husbands or brothers 
or sons to death in the service of their country. In 

* Frederick Douglass, at that time the most noted representa- 
tive of his race, called on President Lincoln, of which visit he 
says : "I was never more quickly or more completely put at 
ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham 
Lincoln," Upon his visitor's urging that colored and white sol- 
diers should have equal pay and promotion, Lincoln admitted 
the justice of the demand. Douglass, in referring to the Presi- 
dent's position when retaliation was asked for colored prisoners 
killed by the enemy, says : "I shall never forget the benignant 
expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye and the quiver 
of his voice when he deprecated the resort to retaliatory meas- 
ures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I do not know where such a meas- 
ure would stop.' He said he could not take men out and kill 
them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could 
get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored 
prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could 
not kill the innocent for the guilty." 

Browne, "Every Day Life of Lincoln," p. 488. 



I30 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

his letter, already noted, to Mrs. Bixby, the mother of 
five sons who had "died gloriously on the field of bat- 
tle," Lincoln expresses the wish that he might be able 
to comfort her in her grief, saying: 

I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the an- 
guish of your bereavement and leave you only the cher- 
ished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride 
that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 
the altar of freedom. 

But while Lincoln's tender nature and greatness of 
heart were his preeminent qualities, it must not be 
thought that he lacked courage and iron resolution in 
carrying out his convictions in behalf of truth and jus- 
tice. In emergencies he proved himself a man of the 
firmest decision of character, able to stand erect and 
face the greatest of storms. He proved in his own 
person and by the record of his life that 

The bravest are the tenderest, 
The loving are the daring. 

After his election to the Presidency there appeared 
to have been a change of feeling even among some 
of the men of prominence who had supported him. 
They feared that he had not sufficient strength of char- 
acter to face the mighty conflict that was impending. 

In reply to a letter of inquiry from Senator Henry 
Wilson of Massachusetts, Herndon wrote a remark- 
able letter on December 21, i860, in which he said: 

Lincoln is a man of heart — aye, as gentle as a woman's 
and as tender — but he has a will as strong as iron. He 
therefore loves all mankind, hates slavery and every form 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 131 

of despotism. Put these together — love for the slave 
and a determination, a will that justice strong and un- 
yielding shall be done when he has the right to act, and 
you can form your own conclusion. Lincoln will fail 
here, namely, if a question of political economy — if any 
question comes up which is doubtful, questionable, which 
no man can demonstrate, then his friends can rule him ; 
but when on Justice, Right, Liberty, the Government, 
the Constitution and the Union, then you may all stand 
aside. He will rule then, and no man can move him — 
no set of men can do it. There is no failure here. This 
is Lincoln, and you mark my prediction. You and I 
must keep the people right. God will keep Lincoln 
right. ^ 

Wilson still had doubts, but years later he admitted 
that these predictions had been fulfilled to the letter. 

During the war it v\Aas almost the daily custom of 
the President to visit the Washington hospitals. He 
gave much of his vitality in the midst of his mighty 
cares to this sacrificial service. One of the army sur- 
geons said : 

'There was no medicine ec[ual to the cheerfulness 
his visit inspired, but its effect upon him was sad- 
dening." 

One of the remarkable organizations connected with 
the Civil War was the ''United States Christian Com- 
mission," which not only ministered to the material 
wants of the soldiers Init had also a distinctive work 
of spiritual ministry. It was largely under the direc- 
tion of the Young Men's Christian Association, and 

° "Lincoln and Herndon," p. 282. 



132 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

the work now going on in the World's War is its fuller 
development. In the hall of the National House of 
Representatives on January 29, 1865, the Commission 
held a public anniversary meeting. A great throng at- 
tended and listened to reports of the work and a num- 
ber of addresses. 

The President and Mrs. Lincoln, members of the 
Cabinet and the Supreme Court, foreign ministers, of- 
ficers of the Army and Navy, and many Congressmen 
and leading citizens were in attendance. Lincoln was 
deeply interested in the reports of those who had min- 
istered to the sick and wounded on the battle-fields and 
in the hospitals. 

It was noted by one who sat near the President that 
when Philip Phillips sang the song entitled ''Your 
Mission" Mr. Lincoln was deeply moved and tears ran 
down his face. Secretary of State Seward, who pre- 
sided over the meeting, received this note written on 
one of the programs: 

Near the close let us have "Your Mission" repeated 
by Mr. Phillips. Don't say I called for it. 

A. Lincoln. 

The following verse may explain his emotion : 

If you cannot in the conflict 

Prove yourself a soldier true, 
If, where fire and smpke are thickest 

There's no work for you to do ; 
When the battle-field is silent, 

You can go with careful tread, 
You can bear away the wounded. 

You can cover up the dead.*" 
* "Annals of the United States Christian Commission," pp. 216, 
256. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 133 

It would have been indeed wonderful if this man, 
so full of sympathy for his suffering fellow-men, had 
not had his soul stirred by the horrors of the drink 
habit and the drink traffic. While the facts as to his 
relations to the temperance reform were only imper- 
fectly recorded at the time, they show that the cause 
had a large place in his mind and heart, and in every 
portion of his life he gave his testimony against the 
evils of drink. There is no need of any strained ef- 
fort to magnify his interest in the temperance cause 
and his work in its behalf. We have given this rec- 
ord : 

He was a lifelong abstainer; his first effort at liter- 
ary composition was an essay on temperance ; his first 
great speech, on Washington's birthday in 1842, was 
in behalf of total abstinence and the reform of drunk- 
ards; his first public identification with a great moral 
question was his work for the temperance reform. 

There are on record many incidents that illustrate 
Lincoln's sense of the danger of drink and his interest 
in saving men from its evil power. In the days of 
the world's greatest war every effort was made to pro- 
tect the young men in armies and navies from the 
evils of drink, — efforts that were perhaps not so per- 
sonal as the one made in the following story told by 
a veteran of the Civil War at a Lincoln meeting. It 
shows Lincoln's abhorrence of the saloon and the 
drink habit : 

"We have heard what Lincoln has done for all of us; 
I want to tell what he did for me," said the veteran. 
'T was a private in one of the Western regiments that 



134 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

arrived first in Washington after the call for 75,000. 
We were marching through the city amid great crowds 
of cheering people, and then, after going into camp, 
were given leave to see the town. Like many other 
of our boys the saloon or tavern was the first thing we 
hit. With my comrade I was just about to go into 
the door of one of these places when a hand was laid 
upon my arm, and, looking up, there was President 
Lincoln from his great height above me, regarding 
me, a mere lad, with those kindly eyes and pleasant 
smile. I almost dropped with surprise and bashful- 
ness, but he held out his hand, and as I took it he shook 
hands in strong Western fashion, and said : 'I don't 
like to see our uniform going into these places.' That 
was all he said. He turned immediately and walked 
away, and we passed on. We would not have gone 
into that tavern for all the wealth of Washington City. 
And this is what Abraham Lincoln did then and there 
for me. He fixed me so that whenever I go near a 
saloon and in any way think of entering, his words and 
face come back tO' me. That experience has been a 
means of salvation to my life. To-day I hate the sa- 
loon and have hated it ever since I heard those words 
from that great man." '^ 

History shows that a number of our Presidents have 
said and done some things favorable to the temperance 
reform; but Lincoln, by his own lifelong personal ex- 
ample, and by his aggressive efforts in actual work as 
a public advocate in trying to protect the army from 
drink, did more than any other occupant of the presi- 

■^ Dr. John Talmadge Bergen, The Interior, Februarj^ 11, 1909. 



LINCOLN AND LIQUOR i35 

dential chair. It is certain that there is no record of a 
single act of Lincohi's Hfe, or of a single word that he 
ever spoke or wrote, which even suggests the slightest 
sympathy with any form of the drink habit or any fa- 
voring recognition of the liquor traffic. 

Lincoln had indeed a prophetic vision of the end of 
slavery, and also of the end of drink bondage, when 
he said: 

When the victory shall be complete— when there shall 
neither be a slave nor a drunkard on earth— how proud 
the title of that land which may truly claim to be the 
birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that 
shall have ended in victory. How nobly distmguished 
that people who shall have planted and nurtured to ma- 
turity both the political and moral freedom of their 
species. 

This keen foreknowledge of what was to be would 
justify, even aside from other elements of his char- 
acter and accomplishment, John Hay's estimate of his 
worth to his country and to humanity : 

As in spite of some rudeness, Republicanism is the 
sole hope of a sick world, so Lincoln with all his foibles 
is the greatest character since Christ. 

And there can be no better summary of the real 

character of America's Great-Heart than this by the 

poet Markham: 

But most he read the heart of common man, 
Scanned all its secret pages stained with tears, 
Saw all the guile, saw all the piteous pains. 
And yet could keep the smile about his lips, 



136 LINCOLN AND LIQUOR 

Love and forgive, see all and pardon all; 
His only fault, the fault that some of old 
Laid even on God— that he was ever wont 
To bend the law to let his mercy out. ^ 

' Edwin Markham, "The Coming of Lincoln." 



AN ADDRESS 

delivered before 
Springfield Washingtonian 

TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, 

At the Second Presbyterian Church, 

— on the — 

22D Day of February, 1842. 

BY 

Abraham Lincoln, Esq. 

ANNIVERSARY OF THE SPRINGFIELD WASH- 
INGTONIAN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY 

Sangamo Journal, Feb. 25, 1842.- (Editorial.) 

This anniversary, the first of the kind celebrated in this county 
passed off well. A procession was ^ ^^f ^^ at 1 1 o clock at the 
Methodist Church, under direction of Col. B S. Clement as 
Chtf Marshal, and, escorted by the beautiful company of 
Sanaamo Guards, under command of Capt. ^- ^- .^^^^^Jl 
nwched through' some of the principal f -ts of the aty, and 
re-iched the Second Presbyterian Church at 12 o clock. ine 
Td dress delivered by Mr. Lincoln, in our opinion, was excellent 
Tl e Soc ety directe'd it to be printed. The singing deligh ed 
the immense crowd. Several pieces were a second time cal ed 
for and repeated. -Indeed, the whole was a most happy affair. 
The weather was delightful. 

137 



APPENDIX 

ADDRESS 

Although the Temperance Cause has been in progress 
for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is just 
now being crowned with a degree of success hitherto un- 
paralleled. 

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions 
of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause 
itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract 
theory, to a living, breathing, active and powerful chief- 
tain, ^oing forth "conquering and to conquer." The cita- 
dels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and 
dismantled; his temples and his altars, where the rites 
of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and 
where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, 
are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the 
conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from s^ea 
to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his 
standard at a blast. 

For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice. 
That, that success is so much greater now, than hereto- 
fore,' is doubtless owing to rational causes ; and if we 
would have it continue, we shall do well to mquire what 
those causes are. 

The warfare heretofore waged against the demon in- 
temperance has, somehow or other, been erroneous. 
Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they 

139 



I40 APPENDIX 

adopted, have not been the most proper. These cham- 
pions for the most part have been preachers, lawyers and 
hired agents, between these and the mass of mankind, 
there is a want of approachability, if the term be admis- 
sible, partially at least, fatal to their success. They are 
supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest, with 
those very persons whom it is their object to convince 
and persuade. 

And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe mo- 
tives to men of these classes, other than those they pro- 
fess to act upon. The preacher it is said, advocates tem- 
perance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of 
the church and State ; the lawyer from his pride, and 
vanity of hearing himself speak ; and the hired agent for 
his salary. 

But when one, who has long been known as a victim 
of intemperance, bursts the fetters that have bound him, 
and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his 
right mind," a redeemed specimen of long lost human- 
ity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in eyes, to 
tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no 
more forever ; of his once naked and starving children, 
now clad and fed comfortably ; of a wife, long weighed 
down with woe, weeping and a broken heart, now re- 
stored to health, happiness and a renewed affection ; and 
how easily it is all done, once it is resolved to be done; 
how simple his language, there is a logic and an elo- 
quence in it, that few with human feelings can resist. 
They cannot say that he desires a union of church and 
State, for he is not a church member ; they cannot say 
he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole de- 
meanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all ; 
they cannot say he speaks for pay for he receives none, 
and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be 



APPENDIX 141 

doubted ; or his sympathy for those he would persuade 
to imitate his example, be denied. 

In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class 
of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps 
chiefly, owing. But, had the old-school champions them- 
selves been of the most wise selecting, was their sys- 
tem of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was 
not. Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and 
dram-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both 
impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic, because it is not 
much in the nature of man to be driven to anything; 
still less to be driven about that, which is exclusively his 
own business ; and least of all, where such driving is to 
be submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or 
burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker 
were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and 
persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an err- 
ing brother ; but in the thundering tones of anathema and 
denunciation with which the lordly judge often groups 
together all the crimes of the felon's life, and thrusts 
them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death 
upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and 
miseiy and crime in the land ; that they were the manu- 
facturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and 
murderers that infest the earth ; that their houses were 
the workshops of the devil ; and that their persons should 
be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral pes- 
tilences. I say, when they were told all this, and in this 
way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, 
to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to 
join the ranks of their denouncers, in a hue and cry 
against themselves. 

To have expected them to do otherwise than they did 
— to have expected them not to meet denunciation with 



142 APPENDIX 

denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anath- 
ema with anathema — was to expect a reversal of human 
nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed. 

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, 
persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be 
adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, "that a drop of 
honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." So with 
men. If you would win a man to your cause, first con- 
vince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is 
a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what 
he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, 
when once gained, you will find but little trouble in con- 
vincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if in- 
deed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, 
assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his ac- 
tion, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, 
and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues 
to his head and his heart; and though your cause be 
naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, 
harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and 
though you throw it with more than herculean force and 
precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than 
to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye-straw. 
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who 
would lead him, even to his own best interests. 

On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the 
temperance advocates of former times. Those whom 
they desire to convince and persuade are their old friends 
and companions. They know they are not demons, nor 
even the worst of men ; they know that generally they are 
kind, generous and charitable, even beyond the example 
of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are prac- 
tical philanthropists ; and they glow with a generous and 
brotherly zeal, that mere theorizers are incapable of feel- 



APPENDIX 143 

ing. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts en- 
tirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts, their 
tongues give utterance, *'Love through all their actions 
run, and all their words are mild ;" in this spirit they 
speak and act, and in the same, they are heard and re- 
garded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, 
and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuc- 
cessful. But I have said that denunciations against 
dram- sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust, as well as 
impolitic. Let us see. 

I have not enquired at what period of time the use 
of intoxicating liquors commenced; nor is it important 
to know. It is sufficient that to all of us who now in- 
habit the world, the practice of drinking them is just as 
old as the world itself — that is, we have seen the one just 
as long as we have seen the other. When all such of us 
as have now reached the years of maturity first opened 
our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicat- 
ing liquor ; recognized by everybody, used by everybody, 
repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the 
first draught of the infant, and the last draught of the 
dying man. From the sideboard of the parson, down to 
the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was con- 
stantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that and 
the other disease; Government provided it for soldiers 
and sailors ; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking 
or "hoe-down" anywhere about, without it was posi- 
tively unsufferable. So too, it was everywhere a re- 
spectable article of manufacture and of merchandise. 
The making of it was regarded as an honorable liveli- 
hood, and he could make most, was the most enterprising 
and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it 
were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods 
of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from 



144 APPENDIX 

town to town ; boats bore it from clime to clime, and the 
winds wafted it from nation to nation; and merchants 
bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with pre- 
cisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer 
and by-stander, as are felt at the selling and buying of 
plows, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessaries 
of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated, but 
recognized and adopted its use. 

It is true, that even then, it was known and acknowl- 
edged that many were greatly injured by it; but none 
seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad 
thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. The 
victims of it were to be pitied, and compassionated, just 
as are the heirs of consumption, and other hereditary dis- 
eases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, and 
not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. 

If then, what I have been saying is true, is it wonder- 
ful that some should think and act now as all thought 
and acted twenty years ago, and is it just to assail, con- 
demn, or despise them for doing so? The universal 
sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argument, or at 
least an influence not easily overcome. The success of 
the argument in favor of the existence of an over-rul- 
ing Providence, mainly depends upon that sense; and 
men ought not, in justice, to be denounced for yielding 
to it in any case, or giving it up slowly, especially when 
they are backed by interest, fixed habits, or burning ap- 
petites. 

Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old 
reformers fell, was the position that all habitual drunk- 
ards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore, must be 
turned adrift, and damned without remedy, in order that 
the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate 
then, and to all mankind some hundreds of years there- 



APPENDIX 145 

after. There is in this, something so repugnant to hu- 
manity, so uncharitable, so cold blooded and feelingless, 
that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiasm of 
a popular cause. We could not love the man who taught 
it — we could not hear him with patience. The heart 
could not throw open its portals to it, the generous man 
could not adopt it, it could not mix with his blood. It 
looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and 
brothers overboard, to lighten the boat for our security 
— that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest mean- 
ness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of a 
reformation to be effected by such a system were too re- 
mote in point of time to warmly engage many in its be- 
half. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for pos- 
terity ; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has 
done nothing for us ; and theorize on it as we may, prac- 
tically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made 
to think we are, at the same time, doing something for 
ourselves. 

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, 
to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor 
for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves 
shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which com- 
munity takes no pains whatever to secure their own eter- 
nal welfare at no greater distant day? Great distance 
in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and 
render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be en- 
joyed, or pains to be endured after we shall be dead and 
gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, and 
much less in the cases of others. 

Still in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous, 
in promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, 
as to render the whole subject with which they are con- 
nected easily turned into ridicule. "Better lay down that 
spade you're stealing, Paddy — if you don't, you'll pay for 



146 APPENDIX 

it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if ye'll 
credit me so long I'll take another jist." 

By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the 
habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They 
adopt a more enlarged philanthropy, they go for present 
as well as future good. They labor for all now living, 
as well as hereafter to live. They teach hope to all — de- 
spair to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the 
doctrine of unpardonable sin, as in Christianity it is 
taught, so in this they teach — 

"While the lamp holds out to burn, 
The vilest sinner may return.'' 

And, what is a matter of the most profound congratula- 
tion, they, by experiment upon experiment, and example 
upon example, prove the maxim to be no less true in the 
one case than in the other. On every hand we behold 
those who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now 
the chief apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast 
out by ones, by sevens, by legions ; and their unfortunate 
victims, like the poor possessed, who was redeemed from 
his long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publish- 
ing to the ends of the earth how great things have been 
done for them. 

To these new champions, and this new system of tac- 
tics, our late success is mainly owing; and to them we 
must mainly look for the final consummation. The ball 
is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so able as they 
to increase its speed and its bulk — to add to its momen- 
tum, and its magnitude — even though unlearned in let- 
ters, for this task none are so well educated. To fit them 
for this work they have been taught in the true school. 
They have been in that gulf from which they would teach 
others the means of escapes. They have passed that 



APPENDIX 147 

prison wall which others have long declared impassable ; 
and who that has not, shall dare to weigh opinions with 
them as to the mode of passing? 

But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have 
suffered by intemperance personally, and have reformed, 
are the most powerful and efficient instruments to push 
the reformation to ultimate success, it does not follow, 
that those who have not suffered, have no part left them 
to perform. Whether or not the world would be vastly 
benefited by a total and final banishment from it of all 
intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open ques- 
tion. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative 
with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowl- 
edge it in their hearts. 

Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good 
the good of the whole demands? Shall he, who cannot 
do much, be, for that reason excused if he do nothing? 
"But," says one, "what good can I do by signing the 
pledge? I never drink, even without signing." This 
question has already been asked and answered more than 
a million of times. Let it be answered once more. For 
the man to suddenly, or in any other way, to break off 
from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a 
long course of years, and until his appetite for them has 
grown ten or a hundred fold stronger, and more craving, 
than any natural appetite can be, requires a most power- 
ful moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs eveiy 
moral support and influence, that can possibly be brought 
to his aid, and thrown around him. And not only so, 
but every moral prop should be taken from whatever ar- 
gument might rise in his mind to lure him to his back- 
sliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should 
be able to see all that he respects, all that he admires, all 
that he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward, 



148 APPENDIX 

and none beckoning him back to his former miserable 
"wallowing in the mire." 

But it is said by some that men will think and act for 
themselves ; that none will disuse spirits or anything else 
because his neighbors do ; and that moral influence is not 
that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine 
this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this posi- 
tion most stiffly, what com.pensation he will accept to go 
to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon with 
his wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, Lll ven- 
ture. And why not ? There would be nothing irreligious 
in it ; nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable — then why 
not ? Is it not because there would be something egregi- 
ously unfashionable in it? Then it is the influence of 
fashion ; and what is the influence of fashion, but the in- 
fluence that other people's actions have on our own ac- 
tions — the strong inclination each of us feels to do as we 
see all our neighbors do ? Nor in the influence of fash- 
ion confined to any particular thing or class of things. 
It is just as strong on one subject as another. Let us 
make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the 
temperance pledge, as for husbands to wear their wives' 
bonnets to church, and instances will be just as rare in 
the one case as the other. 

"But," say some, "we are no drunkards and we shall 
not acknowledge ourselves such, by joining a reformed 
drunkard's society, whatever our influence might be." 
Surely no christian will adhere to this objection. 

If they believe as they profess, that Omnipotence con- 
descended to take on himself the form of sinful man, 
and, as such, to die an ignominious death for their sakes, 
surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely 
lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eter- 
nal salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of 



APPENDIX 149 

their fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very 
great. In my judgment such of us as have never fallen 
victims, have been spared more from the absence of ap- 
petite, than from any mental or moral superiority over 
those who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual 
drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will 
bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other 
class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in 
the brilliant, and warm-blooded, to fall into this vice — 
the demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted 
in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What 
one of us but can call to mind some relative, more prom- 
ising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sac- 
rifice to his rapacity ? He ever seems to have gone forth 
like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, 
if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall 
he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that 
arrest, all can give aid that will ; and who shall be ex- 
cused that can, and will not? Far around as human 
breath has ever blown, he keeps our fathers, our broth- 
ers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains of 
moral death. To all the living everywhere, we cry, 
"Come sound the moral trump, that these may rise and 
stand up an exceeding great army." — "Come from the 
four winds, O breath ! and breathe upon these slain that 
they may live." If the relative grandeur of revolutions 
shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery 
they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, 
indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever 
have seen. 

Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly 
proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far 
exceeding that of any other nations of the earth. In it 
the world has found a solution of the long mooted prob- 



ISO APPENDIX 

lem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In 
it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow 
and expand into the universal liberty of mankind. 

But, with all these glorious results, past, present, and 
to come, it had its evils, too. It breathed forth famine, 
swam in blood, and rode in fire ; and long, long after, the 
orphans' cry and the widows' wail, continued to break 
the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the 
inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought. 

Turn now, to the temperance revolution. In it we 
shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery 
manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed — in it, more of 
want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow as- 
suaged. By it, no orphans starving, no widows weeping. 
By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest; 
even the dram-maker and dram-seller will have glided 
into other occupations so gradually as never to have felt 
the change, and will stand ready to join all others in the 
universal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this, 
to the cause of political freedom, with such an aid, its 
march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth 
shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts 
of perfect liberty. Happy day, when all appetites con- 
trolled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected; mind, 
all conquering mind shall live and move, the monarch of 
the world. Glorious consummation ! Hail fall of fury ! 
Reign of reason, all hail ! 

And when the victory shall be complete — when there 
shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth — 
how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim 
to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolu- 
tions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly 
distinguished that people, who shall have planted and nur- 



APPENDIX 151 

tiired to maturity, both the political and moral freedom 
of their species. 

This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the 
birthday of Washington — we are met to celebrate this 
day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth — long 
since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mighti- 
est in moral reformation. On that name a eulogy is ex- 
pected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or 
glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. 
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, 
and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on. 



LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED 

Arnold, Isaac N. "The Life of Abraham Lincoln." 
Chicago : McClurg & Co., 1887. 

Bacon, Leonard Woolsey. "A History of American 
Christianity." Christian Literature Co., 1897. 

Banks, Rev. Louis Albert, D.D. "The Lincohi 
Legion." The Mershan Co., 1903. 

Beecher, Lyman. "Autobiography and Correspond- 
ence." 

Brooks, Noah. "Abraham Lincohi." Putnam & Sons, 
1896. 

Browne, Francis F. "The Every-Day Life of Abra- 
ham Lincoln." Wm. G. Hills: St. Louis, 1896. 

Browne, Robert H., M.D. "Abraham Lincoln and the 
Men of His Time." Blakely-Oswald Printing Co., 
1907. 

Bryce, James. "The American Commonwealth." The 
Macmillan Company, 1891. "Speeches and Letters of 
Abraham Lincoln." Every Man's Library: E. P. 
Button Company. 

Carpenter, F. B. "Six Months at the White House 
with Abraham Lincoln." Hurd & Houghton, 1867. 

Charnwood, Lord. "Abraham Lincoln." Holt & Co., 
1917. 

Chesterton, G. K. "Charles Dickens, A Critical 
Study." Dodd, Mead & Co., 1906. 

153 



154 LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED 

Chittenden, L. E. "Recollections of President Lincoln 
and His Administration." Harper & Bros., 1904. 

Coffin, Charles Carleton. ''Abraham Lincoln." 
Harper & Bros., 1893. 

Crafts, Dr. and Mrs. W. F. 'Tntoxicating Drinks and 
Drugs in All Lands and Times." International Re- 
form Bureau, 1911. 

Crook, Col. Wm. H. "Through Five Administrations." 
Harper & Bros., 1910. 

Curtis, W. E. "Abraham Lincoln." J. B, Lippincott 
& Co. 

CuYLER, Dr. Theodore L. "Temperance in All Na- 
tions." 

Dickens, Charles. "American Notes." Nelson and 
Sons. 

Dow, Neal. "Reminiscences." Express Publishing 
Co. : Portland, Maine, 1898. 

Garland, Hamlin. "General Grant, His Life and 
Character." Doubleday & McClure Co. 

GouGH, John B. "Autobiography of John B. Gough." 
Bill, Nicholy Co., 1870. 

Griffis, Rev. Wm. Elliot. "Jo^"'^ Chambers." An- 
drus & Church : Ithaca, 1903. 

Herndon. "Abraham Lincoln, The True Story of a 
Great Life," by Wm. H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik. 
D. Appleton & Co., 1896. 

Holland, J. G. "The Life of Abraham Lincoln." Gur- 
don Bill, 1866. 

Howard, O. O. "Autobiography of General O. O. 
Howard." 

Koerner. "Life Sketches of Gustave Koerner." Cedar 
Rapids, 1909. 

Newton, Joseph Ford. "Lincoln and Herndon." Ce- 
dar Rapids, Iowa, 1910. 



LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED 155 

NicoLAY AND Hay. "Abraham Lincoln — A History," by 
John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Century Co., 1890. 

Rankin, Henry B. "Personal Recollections of Abra- 
ham Lincoln." Putnam, 1916. 

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